|
|
| To give the readers more idea of how
this Tao Te Ching translation is organized, in this section,
I try to illustrate with the first verse my translation approach.
|
| It is interesting to see how the
translation may vary with a different choice of words and
arrangement. (See "Comparing Different Translations of the
First Verse".) |
Now, let's break down this sentence:
|
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|| |
|| |
|| |
|| |
|| |
|| |
|
Tao(the way) |
can |
Tao
(to tell
/ to
guide) |
not |
ordinary
/
eternal |
Tao
(tell /
guide
/ the
way) |
|
| (1) In most cases, I have excluded
implied meanings. For example, some people translate the second
"Tao" as "to express", "to state", "to describe" ... These
are all implied meanings. I prefer to leave it simply as original
(as much as possible). |
(2) Some
Chinese words have multiple meanings. In this example, the word
"Tao" have threefold meanings. And for the word
"chang"( ), there is two possible meanings to choose from.
In the ideal case, we can find an English
equivalent to convey the multiple meanings. Or alternately find a
way to work around it. Otherwise, we have to choose an English word
with the representative
meaning. |
(3) Having determined the exact word
meanings, then they have to be organized into a proper
sentence.
I have used parentheses ( )
to indicate words for conjunctions, pronoun, preposition, etc. which
may be point of argument. Then the readers can justify it
themselves. |
| (4) Finally, according to my
understanding of the Tao Te Ching, I add in parentheses words
and phrases to explicate the underlying meaning of the
sentence. |
| |
   |
| Some people say any translation is an
interpretation. This is something I have tried to
avoid. I do not want the readers to just accept my
interpretation - I want to provide the word meanings organized into
a sentence for the readers to determine what Lao-tzu meant by
themselves. |
| I believe that a great enlightened
sage like Lao-tzu tends to be very accurate and precise with
the use of words. This is to say he will not use a different
word of similar meaning just to make it sounds good
poetically. Also, the word he used to express a certain meaning
should be consistent throughout the Tao Te
Ching. |
| This is why I have started with a word
by word translation, trying to determine the original meaning of
each individual Chinese character as they appear in the Tao Te
Ching. |
| This is because the Tao Te
Ching is one of the most ancient texts in China - even before
the compilation of any Chinese dictionaries. |
| The Chinese language has evolved and
been enriched quite a lot during the later Warring States Period
(403-222 B.C.) -- with the emergence of many new words and compound
words. On the contrary, ancient Chinese classics of the Spring
and Autumn Period (770-476 B.C.) like the Tao Te Ching, the
Analects and Shi Jing (the Book of Odes) are relatively
simple with hardly any compound words. |
| Therefore in this translation, (with
only a few exceptions for words that I have found difficulty in
determining the exact Chinese original) I have only adopted word
meanings with classical references that can be dated back to the
Spring and Autumn Period. In fact, the meaning I have chosen for
most of the words is according to the original meaning as per the
hieroglyph of Chinese characters. And in most cases, no implied
meaning is considered. |
| Of course, scholars may not
necessarily agree with my understanding of the word meanings. With
this translation, I just hope to present a more systematic approach
in understanding this great ancient classic of
Tao. | |
|
