Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin • Hacker News Board

Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#1

Post by andsoitis » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin
github.com

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#2

Post by 4ggr0 » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

For people who like The Big Lebowski, there's "The Tao of the Dude"

https://dudeism.com/taoofthedude/

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#3

Post by o_____________o » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

I picked up Tao Te Ching as an American teenager and was moved by how it cuts against the American faith in visible dominance and self-assertion, proposing a form of strength that is low, quiet, and unseen. It's much more than that of course, but that aspect had immediate impact on my thinking.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#4

Post by raincole » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

HN seems to like Tao Te Ching.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#5

Post by kittywantsbacon » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

From the bottom:

> This is a rendition, not a translation. I do not know any Chinese. I could approach the text at all only because Paul Carus, in his 1898 translation of the Tao Te Ching, printed the Chinese text with each character followed by a transliteration and a translation. My gratitude to him is unending.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#6

Post by roxolotl » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

This is wonderful. Ursula K. Le Guin is a great thinker and I’d highly recommend her novels. I’ve read Ken Liu’s, who many here probably know at least from translating The Three Body Problem and Death’s End, Tao Te Ching and it was remarkably poetic. Excited to read another person’s interpretation.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#7

Post by robotomir » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

I am just noticing how those ideas are present in Wizard of Earthsea.

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#8

Post by raincole » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

kittywantsbacon wrote: post #5

From the bottom: > This is a rendition, not a translation. I do not know any Chinese. I could approach the text at all only because Paul Carus, in his 1898 translation of the Tao Te Ching, printed the Chinese text with each character followed by a transliteration and a translation. My gratitude to him is unending.

Honestly, even if you know Chinese, it's very hard to translate Tao Te Ching into English.

Hell, it's hard to translate it into Chinese. Even the first paragraph is controversial. For example this rendition says:

> The name you can say

> isn’t the real name.

However, in a 5th century interpretation[0], it's more akin to:

> The fame and wealth the mortals praise are not a natural state.

(My extremely simplified paraphrasing)

[0]: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=491818

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#9

Post by an0malous » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

> I think of it as the Aleph, in Borges’s story: if you can see it rightly, it contains everything.

I'm a simple man. I see Borge, I upvote

Re: Tao Te Ching – Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

#10

Post by dang » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #4

HN seems to like Tao Te Ching. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

I found these. Others?

Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40886419 - July 2024 (118 comments)

Tao Te Ching – Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English Translation (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058843 - Oct 2023 (99 comments)

Tao Te Ching - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37686713 - Sept 2023 (170 comments)

175 translations of of the Tao Te Ching - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23945605 - July 2020 (1 comment)

Translations of the Dao De Jing - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16953938 - April 2018 (59 comments)