Especially when we talk about translating historic writing. Yes, not knowing the source language is a huge barrier. But so is not knowing specific cultural touchstones or references in the text. In-depth translations usually transliterate as a part of the process. Many words and language patterns are untranslatable, which is why perfect translations are impossible.
When translating poetry, issues of meter and rhythm are even more important. It comes down to what the purpose of a translation is meant to achieve. Yes, there are ideas and themes but there is no hiding the fact that translators always imprint their own perspective on a work - it's unavoidable and personally shouldn't even be the goal.
Most translators of popular texts look closely at other translations to "triangulate" on meaning and authorial intent. Older translations may use archaic writing but have historical understanding, well-researched translations may be more precise about tricky words or concepts. More "writerly" translations tend to rebuild the work from the building blocks and produce a more cohesive whole. None of these are wrong approaches.
I like the term "rendition" because it throws away the concept of the "authoritative translation". I like to think of translations the same way as cover songs. The best covers may be wildly different from the original but they share the same roots.
As a reader, if you can't ever "hear" the original because you don't know thr language you can still appreciate someone's "cover version", or triangulate the original by reading multiple translations.
Most translators of popular texts look closely at other translations to "triangulate" on meaning and authorial intent. Older translations may use archaic writing but have historical understanding, well-researched translations may be more precise about tricky words or concepts. More "writerly" translations tend to rebuild the work from the building blocks and produce a more cohesive whole. None of these are wrong approaches.
It's a fun book full of interesting linguistic trivia.
The patience would be needed to get through the 50 or so translations of the same poem, all different and "wrong" in some way.
[1] https://jasomill.at/HofstadterOneginPreface.pdf
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-465-0209...
The transliteration of the Tao starts on page 159 and consists of columns of the characters each with a literal meaning and occasional comments by the translator. I found the first few chapters in that presentation very interesting, like a kind of puzzle (I don't read Chinese to any extent at all).
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)
However, I think it might require some life maturity to recognize that. Certainly a recovery from Englightenment rationalism. My person experience is that an understanding that "the name that can be named/identified is not the eternal Name" and "the way that can be walked is not the eternal Way" took me until around my 40s to appreciate.
Daoism also appears to have taken a literalist turn (ironically). The book "Taoism: the Parting of the Ways" [1], by (former) Harvard Professor Holmes Welch, interprets the text as being a guide to a mystical way of living, similar to St. John of the Cross (minus the Christian part), which is fascinating. Then he describes how the two main factions took the text literally, and how that evolved.
[1] I have a summary at http://geoffprewett.com/BookReviews/TaoismThePartingOfTheWay...
the a/symmetry of the opening bits in Chinese, visually echoes a taiji:
> 道可道，
> 非恆道；
> 名可名，
> 非恆名。
given the diversity of translations available for those bits, I think it's fair to say that there's room for debate regarding their exact meaning − dare I say
amusingly, by being certain one understand what it means, somehow one really does not. Lao-Tseu may have been way, way wiser than average.
This is something I was impressed with. Almost every other ancient text starts of being full of certainty or being the authoratitve truth.
and that's still one interpretation ^_^
> Almost every other ancient text starts of being full of certainty
I can't say for sure about ancient texts, but famous wise men certainly (always?) encouraged a fair amount of humility (e.g. Shakyamuni, Socrates, Jesus, Confucius). But few actually wrote.
however, in general, their followers − and popular interpretations − embarrass themselves much less with humility.
in case this isn't known to you − I find this delightful − note that the (respectful) "子" suffix used in names (e.g. Lao-tseu is 老子, Confucius is 孔夫子) means "small thing", "seed", "child".
The moment you say "Dao" (or "Agile", or "methodology"), you've already moved from the thing-in-itself to a sign living inside a sign system. That sign can be useful, but it can't be identical to what it points at.
> “The Agile that can be PM’d is not Agile.”
That’s exactly the stages of simulacra in miniature:
- Faithful copy: "Agile" names a set of lived practices that correspond to reality.
- Masks/denatures: cargo-cult rituals distort it (standups-as-status-reporting).
- Masks absence: the org performs Agile theater to hide that genuine agility is gone.
- Pure simulacrum: "Agile" becomes a self-referential brand/signifier (certs, metrics, tooling) that relates primarily to other signs ("Agile maturity model", "story points velocity"), not to any actual working output.
For a reductionist, it might be better understood as - step outside of your usual mode of thinking. Remember that you don't know everything. Or just - take time to stop and smell the flowers. Try to spend more time noticing and less time analyzing.
There are things that are difficult to communicate directly in the reductionist mode of thought - and are intended to have meaning at multiple levels of abstraction. You have to think a bit more laterally.
> Daoism also appears to have taken a literalist turn (ironically).
It's incredibly ironic. To those who wonder where the irony is, imagine writing a book of poems on "freesbeing", which you describe as an ineffable experience that one gets when they play the freesbee. In your book, most passages allude to subtleties that escape any reader who isn't a freesbee enthousiast. And so, only those who pick up a freesbee and start throwing it unlock the meaning in your book. Then thousands of years later, intellectuals try to explain "freesbeing" without knowing what even is the freesbee.
Daoism is a practical guide to a mystical way of life. Similar to the teachings of Buddhist mystics, Advaitist mystics, Christian mystics, Sufi mystics, and so forth. Most such teachings are very practical and somewhat point in the same (inner) direction. A shared core tenet is that experiences are infinitely more valid (i.e. true) than the content of thoughts (i.e. concepts, philosophy, beliefs, labels, words, etc) used to describe them. Said more commonly, the mind -- the craddle of thoughts, the mother of all concepts, explanations, and philosophies -- is a liar. This is peppered everywhere in the Tao Te Ching, starting from the very first line. Yet, most interpretations of it are conceptual, trying to make it into some kind of a philosophy.
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
Caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace el camino,
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
Caminante no hay camino
sino estelas en la mar.It is possible to associate passages from the Tao Te Ching to memes that just pop up in your social media feeds. A native speaker and writer will have rich associations in the language you can get a sense of in the language used to cover Chinese philosophy at the SEP entries.
There’s a Zen koan about that (with Zen coming from Chang which came from a meeting of Buddhism and Taoism in China) — about the finger pointing to the moon, and how all but one student looked at the finger.
In a different example, there is the distinction of virtue signaling and virtue (the “Te” in “Tao Te Ching”)
It's a text about non-duality, among other things. Like the Heart Sutra, or the Diamond Sutra, or 101 Zen Stories, it's not supposed to make sense in an ordinary way. A successful translation is, like the original, intended to catalyze a shift in awareness.
EDIT: For those with a nerdy or scholarly bent, I suggest Red Pine's translation[0], which includes translation of historically relevant commentaries.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Lao-tzus-Taoteching-Lao-Tzu/dp/155659...
She’s captured the poetry and beauty of the received text very well. (I’ve tried my own hand at a translation and read a few other translations).
FWIW, I also made a website with comparison of the different translations/renditions of the Tao Te Ching, including the one by Ursula K. Le Guin[0].
This is kind of how it translates in English:
'Light light moon green grass mountain snow sun together'
For an entire book. It's totally nonsensical but the writing in Chinese at that time was just a bit like that. Classical Chinese sort of seems to have been written more like the way rappers put together their battling rhymes sometimes - you aren't meant to understand it
>"The simplicity of Lao Tzu's language can present an almost impenetrable density of meaning. The reversals and paradoxes in this great poem are the oppositions of the yin and yang — male/female, light/dark, glory/modesty — but the knowing and being of them, the balancing act, results in neither stasis nor synthesis ... reversal, recurrence, are the movement, and yet the movement is onward."
Thanks for your literal character interpretation / perspective.
I often come to this site and compare chapters across multiple versions: https://ttc.tasuki.org/display:Code:gff,sm,jc,rh
Some are more poetic, some are more literal, and keeping with the theme, both of them are just as important.
Every night, I read one new passage — then every morning, I read that same passage again.
Presuming you miss a few readings, you can then complete the entire Tao in less than three months (or: four times per year, cyclically).
This gives you time to digest each passage, be it in dreams or daytime. Nobody will ever fully understand these texts.
>#23 — "he who does not trust enough will not be trusted"
For my next read-through, I will paste Ursula's words alongside Ms. English's.
----
If you have not read The Dispossessed, this is a great intro to LaGuin's perspectiveS.
>The ten thousand things carry yin and embrace yang.
>They achieve harmony by combining these forces.
...
>For one gains by losing.
>And loses by gaining.
----
From Tao #28
>Knowing light and staying dark, be a pattern to the world.
>Being the world's pattern of eternal unerring power is to go back again to boundlessness.
If you talk too early, you end up arguing abstractions. If you listen long enough, the constraints introduce themselves.
By the end of the meeting, the quiet person isn’t trying to win the room — they’re just reporting what reality already said.
This could be a line from [the non-existant] Tao #82.
I don’t doubt that the aspect had immediate impact on your thinking, but I would be very surprised if it also had lasting impact on your behavior.
“Only in silence the word, Only in dark the light, Only in dying life: Bright the hawk’s flight On the empty sky.
“The Creation of Éa,” Ursula K. Le Guin
I'm a simple man. I see Borge, I upvote
From the her postscript:
> 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.
For the interested, the original paperback contains diligent notes about her sources and word choices.
I also reference Le Guin's rendition a bunch here: https://superbowl.substack.com/p/taoism-minus-the-nonsense
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
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)
https://thadk.net/sbs/#/display:Code:gff,sm,jhmd,uklg,jc,rh/...
Around 5k visits a month, including scrapers for LLM training. Somehow I still don't feel this "LLM scrapers have destroyed my website". Seems they don't care about any of my websites. I'm not sure if I should be happy about that, but I feel somewhat slighted - are my websites not good enough to be constantly scraped?
Up voting and down voting comments is an affront to the Dao.
`True leaders are hardly known to their followers.`
Some days it will feel "too simple" — others "too much."
Enjoy your bedtime Tao.
That resonates with so much of the discussion on this site. We're all trying to make good technology that helps people! Why does it so often fall short?
Are you familiar with the Western non-dual traditions?
The producers who made the movie casted the crew ignoring UKLG though I think contractually, they were supposed to listen to her. I wouldn’t be surprised if they swapped out the philosophical core.
Love, Someone who studied Daoism for 16 years.
Chapter 48 of the Tao Te Ching draws a sharp distinction between conventional learning and the Way. Le Guin translates this as: "Studying and learning daily you grow larger. / Following the Way daily you shrink".
Y Combinator exemplifies "growing larger." It describes a process where founders "work intensively," "compress months of growth into weeks," and strive to build companies into massive entities like OpenAI ($500B) and Airbnb ($100B). This aligns with the worldly pursuit of accumulation and "being bright" or "keen," which Le Guin notes leads to the "greatest evil: wanting more".
Le Guin argues that to follow the Way, one must "get smaller and smaller" until arriving at "not doing". This "unlearning" is the removal of the "fuss," desire, and intellectual rigidity that creates resistance.
The relationship between Unlearning and Not Doing is that unlearning strips away the ego-driven need to force outcomes. The YC text quotes Paul Graham defining a formidable founder as "one who seems like they’ll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way." This defines success as the imposition of will upon the world—an act of force. In contrast, Le Guin’s commentary states that wei wu wei (Action by Inaction) is "power that is not force". A Taoist leader does not overcome obstacles by crashing through them; rather, like water, they go "right / to the low loathsome places, / and so finds the way". To the Taoist, the "formidable" approach of forcefully removing obstacles is dangerous because "Those who think to win the world / by doing something to it, / I see them come to grief".
The YC website highlights that "the sense of urgency is so infectious among founders" that it creates maximum productivity. Le Guin’s translation warns explicitly against this state—she writes: "Racing, chasing, hunting, / drives people crazy". Le Guin notes that "To run things, / don't fuss with them," and that "Nobody who fusses / is fit to run things". The "fuss" (or shi) is interpreted by Le Guin as "diplomacy" or "meddling"—essentially, the intense activity and "doing" that YC celebrates.
Instead of infectious urgency, the Taoist relies on "doing without doing," which Le Guin describes as "uncompetitive, unworried, trustful accomplishment".
The YC website describes "formidable founders" who do—they build, pivot, and acquire vast valuations through intense effort. Le Guin’s Tao Te Ching suggests that this is the path of "growing larger". In the Taoist view, these founders are "doing something to" the world, which is a "sacred object" that should not be seized. While YC founders "get what they want," Le Guin observes that "the ever-wanting soul / sees only what it wants," blinding them to the "mystery" and the true nature of the Way. Unlearning, therefore, leads to not doing by dismantling the very ambition that drives a founder to become "formidable" in the first place.
Edit: TBH, IMHO, "the low loathsome places" are not dissimilar from the indignities which a founder should be prepared to suffer, and so maybe startups aren't completely anathema to the Dao.
Nope. This ain't it.
The very first sentence misses the point. (It might be a literal translation. Perhaps. But that's not the essence.) I couldn't go (pun intended) beyond the first sentence. There are much more "essential" translations out there.
However, it's not in the public domain. Her work deserves all the attention it can get, but I'd rather not see it pirated wholesale.
I don't disagree. Does github have a way to report copyright violations?
I just bought the real book from Powell's. Several buying options: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/lao-tzu-the-tao-te-ching
What would reporting this GitHub repo do? Is the late Ursula K. Le Guin going to get a check in the afterlife? Her historical stance on copyright was based on consent. What happens when the author passes away?
Take the bible, which is translated from languages that are closer to mine, and which refers to a culture which is closer to mine, with family and scholars whose interpretation I can understand directly. Still I don't have much confidence that I understand the bulk of it, it takes years of reading and lived experiences to understand both the modern and past contexts in which it was written.
By the same token, I'm certain actual chinese people read the Tao and are like "Lmao what does this mean", and for the most part these books are meant to be mysterious, iirc there's actual sections of the Tao that translate to "You can't understand the Tao".
I don't mean to be overly religious here, it's just that the Tao happens to be religious, but consider Beowulf, which is written in an old form of the English language, surely you would be able to understand it? Not a chance, try it. But ok, surely the translators are able to understand it and provide you a translation without losing much meaning. No, not only can they not provide a translation that you can understand without losing context and signal, but they can't understand a lot of what they are reading anyways. Consider that for just the first word of the whole epic, they are still fighting over what 'Hwaet' means, nobody can even settle on what the first word means! Imagine the rest of the text.
So to think that one has a chance to understand the Tao, or even that it is worth it at all to understand something from a culture so different. Not for me.
Unless you are Asian, by all means go for it, but if you are not, I would invite you to question whether you first have any chance at understanding at all, or whether you will interpret "being like a Straw Dog" from whatever translation you chose through your own lens, like a Rorschach.
You can't understand the tao because there is nothing to "understand".
That is the whole point. If you walk in the woods on a beautiful day and hear birds chirping, there is nothing to "understand". It isn't an intellectual exercise.
Quibbling about translations of the Tao Te Ching is really quite comical. A better taoist "teaching" would be to throw your copy in the garbage and go for a walk in the woods. This is where the cultural problems come in though. That is not really what is meant by the English word "teaching". Then you are expecting to "learn" some kind of new symbolic representation when the whole point is to get rid of symbolic representation.
The idea you can't understand concepts from other humans because you were born into a different cultures is really stupid.
Not saying thay you don't understand it or that your interpretation is wrong, but it is indistinguishable from misunderstanding, and you could get it from any text you don't understand.
The idea that you can throw the text and still understand it just shows how connected to the text you are.
> they are still fighting over what 'Hwaet' means
I don't think anyone is particularly fighting over what it means, just how to translate it when there isn't a parallel in modern English. My personal favorite is a translation that opens with 'Bro!'.
A relatively recent new interpretation:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetry-news/69208/new-resea...
>Ovid's Amores, and the Epic of Gilgamesh is pretty bizarre unless you know quite a bit about ancient Mesopotamia.
But these cultures and texts are much closer to us than the Chinese Tao te Ching.
Taxonomically Latin and English have a common ancestor in ProtoIndoeuropean sure, but English and the Romances (I'm spanish native), but there's a lot of horizontal influence of Latin in English. Netwon, (and many other English writers) wrote in both Latin and English. The aphabet is the same.
Regarding the Epic of Gilgamesh, I haven't read much about that, cuneiform must be insanely hard to read, even through translations, that said, the fact that it seems to be an influence for Noah's Ark story seems to bring it much closer to western culture than Asian culture.
Same thing with Greek literature, it's a bit farther away, but some stuff like ficticious Oddyssey will be somewhat approachable through a translation, the rhymes and a million temporal references will be completely lost obviously.
Even some Arabic math texts I would consider to be somewhat more approachable by virtue of being so foundational to maths in general.
But religious Chinese? must be one of the most unapproachable combos for reading as a non native reader.
> 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.