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| 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:
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Tao
(the way) |
can |
Tao
(to tell
/ to guide) |
not |
ordinary
/
eternal |
Tao
(tell /
guide
/ the
way) |
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| (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. |
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| 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. | |
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