my ramblings

dao de jing

The problem with any translation of the Dao De Jing is that the original Chinese is, by its very nature, extremely ambiguous. This, of course, is one of the reasons that it is still so relevant today. But trying to translate it into English is almost impossible. To give you an idea of what I mean, the first verse begins, in pin yin romanisation (I don't know how to get this thing to write in Chinese!)

dao ke dao, fei chang dao;

ming ke ming, fei chang ming.

Which, translated word for word could be

way can be way, not eternal way;

name can be name, not eternal name.

The trouble is that Dao can mean all sorts of things - way, road, path, to walk, to travel, doctrine.... And the same is true for the word Ming. And all of the meanings are implicit in the original. Chinese doesn't have the same distinctions between verb and noun, subject and object, singular and plural, as English. Perhaps this can be understood more intuitively if it is remembered that in its original form, Chinese is a language of pictograms - an image representing a whole. In the West, our written language separates the represented from the representation absolutely - in written Chinese, this separation is a little less complete. It is difficult to know whether this basic divergence in written language is the cause of, or caused by, the difference between the reductionist philosophies of the West and the more holistic approach of the East. Either way, this means that any English translation of the words of the Dao De Jing is bound to be one sided.

If you are interested, I would recommend, after reading the Stephen Mitchell translation, a look at the Richard Willhelm version. This is a somewhat bizarre choice, seeing as it is translated into English via German, but Willhelm's introduction and commentary is very good. It is rather academic, but that makes a fine contrast to the rather free approach of Mitchell! It was also done before the Americans got hold of Daoism and turned it into a catch-all new-age super-cult. Which is nice!

If you don't mind white-beardy american hippy type academics, Allan Watts' "Tao - the Watercourse Way" is actually rather good, too.