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Tao Te Ching – Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English Translation (1989)
- NullHypothesist 3y agoRead this translation back in 8th grade (~2005?) and it blew my teenage mind. Have read a few more - perhaps it's sentimental, but none quite seem to do it for me like this version.
- orasis 3y agoWhat is the license on this translation?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- superb-owl 3y agoI've said this here before, but Ursula Le Guin's rendition is one of the best
- roylez 3y agoI started by reading Michael LaFargue version, and it is pretty good delivering a basic understanding of the text. I can understand acient Chinese text pretty well, and the original, somehow still feels different from all these translations, but I guess this does not matter that much to a taoist.
- MrRolleyes 3y ago[dead]
- throwaway626 3y agoShe had the humility to admit she knew little about ancient Chinese and the courage to go ahead and venture a translation anyway, striving to touch something deeper than language. Her success is extremely laudable for this reason.
- stillconfused 3y agoIt's great that you've found something you like, but if you are interested in staying close to the text, a translation by a person that deeply understands Classical Chinese literature and philosophy is worth a read. Please try Red Pine- https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556592906 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556592906 To see the difference, let's compare her translation of 4 and 9 (Here, we have Stephen Mitchell and Red Pine's translations) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058843#38095107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38058843#38095107 4: Sourceless The way is empty, used, but not used up. Deep, yes! ancestral to the ten thousand things. Blunting edge, loosing bond, dimming light, the way is the dust of the way. Quiet yes, and likely to endure. Whose child? Born before the gods. 9: Being Quiet Brim-fill the bowl, it'll spill over. Keep sharpening the blade, you'll soon blunt it. Nobody can protect a house full of gold and jade. Wealth, status, pride are their own ruin. To do good, work well, and lie low is the way of the blessing. For 4, some of the concepts don't even appear in the original (quiet?) For 9, it feels like there's a lot of overstepping and blank-filling.
- throwaway626 3y agoI don’t judge scholarly translations by their poetics, so perhaps you shouldn’t judge poetic interpretations by their scholarly merit. The world is big enough for both.
- Podgajski 3y agoShe understood that translating. The Dao is not so much about knowing Chinese, but knowing the Dao. The most important part of translating the Dao De Ching is to be as close as possible to understanding Daoism as one can.
- palad1n 3y agoI remember reading Stephen Mitchell's version waaaay back in 1991, when I was still young and impressionable. There was one line that really blew me away in his translation, and I might be remembering it slightly incorrectly: "The Tao is older than God".
- vitiral 3y agohttps://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html https://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html 4 The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities. It is hidden but always present. I don't know who gave birth to it. It is older than God. My favorite, although my favorite depends on the season 9 Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.
- yborg 3y agoMy personal favorite is Kerson and Rosemary Huang's translation, which includes some of the historical background for the hexagrams and is a very spare rendition that always seemed to me the closest in spirit to the original.
- qohen 3y agoThe book with the hexagrams is the I Ching, not the Tao Te Ching.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoShould be mandatory reading for corporate managers.
- quickthrower2 3y agoLike the art of war?
- roeles 3y agoThere is "the tao of leadership" by John Heider, which is specifically aimed at this
- canjobear 3y agoFor me it's the DC Lau translation. Straightforward and clear, or as clear as you can get with this thing. For the real deal, see https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing?en=off https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing?en=off
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y agoNone of these translations work if you really want to understand the work itself and not the author's interpretation. For example, in the Analects,『學而優則仕』is translated by Legge as "The student, having completed his learning, should apply himself to be an officer." This isn't what the sentence says. It could be what it means but that should be up to the reader. (This is a common phrase in Chinese and has a completly different meaning today although it's hard to say if this meaning comes from the understanding of this text or if the text is simply being used as a source for the current meaning of the phrase.) This is an issue with translations in general but is more of an issue in classical Chinese. Tao Te Ching is particularly bad in this regard. Just read more than one translation and you will see.
- raincole 3y agoTechnically you can say this to most text. You can even say practically no one alive never read The Bible.
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y agoI've read eg. different translations of Crime and Punishment written more than 100 years between each other and I still feel that I read the same book and the meaning, even if somewhat blurred, as been perserved. There is no definite meaning to many passages in classical Chinese so all you have is the text itself. It's not a question of if the author can take the meaning from the original and use that to write a new text in a different language with the same meaning but if the author has the meaning to begin with. A better way would be to give every possible translation of each line where needed, starting with the various relevant translations of each character and then what the phrase probably means literaly and then what the author meant by it (which is another point I havn't even mentioned until now).
- vitiral 3y agoIt's funny to say there is "no definite meaning" when the action proposed is non-action, the meaning defined is un-meaning, the way is wuwei.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- namelosw 3y agoI've seen Tao Te Ching's translation on the HN front page for several times. It seems people are interested in it. The thing with Tao Te Ching is it's too ambiguous because: 1) The Chinese language is very overloaded and thus very ambiguous. 2) Classical Chinese is even more so. 3) Tao Te Ching is intentionally filled with clever puns which makes it more ambiguous. The problem with translations is the translator has to interpret source texts into specific meanings in the target languages. It's like opening Schrödinger's cat box, or unwrapping monads in Haskell and Rust, which essentially deduct multiple possibilities into a single deterministic value. If you're really into it, you probably want to learn some basic Chinese and classical Chinese (lucky they're not so different from each other), and figure out how to look up in the dictionaries. It's probably not as difficult as it sounds - all you need to do is decrypt with dictionaries. Maybe there should be a new form of digital translation, just like hovering texts on Duolingo and it will display all the possible meanings of the word/expression.
- noufalibrahim 3y agoThere was a period in my life in my early 20s when I dabbled heavily in taoism. The book was a staple read for me and I tried to adjust my Outlook accordingly for a long time. Finally though, i dropped it and went back to who I was. Your comment makes me wonder if the specific translation of the book I read was a big factor.
- racktash 3y agoI can relate to this comment. The Tao Te Ching had a profound influence on me. Reading it was the first time I engaged on a "spiritual" level with life (I'm a fairly pragmatic and reductionist guy, perhaps to a fault). But this also wore off for me and I returned to being my usual mostly unspiritual self after a couple of years boring my friends trying to tell my friends about the Tao... Without describing it. I do feel like I have a respect for such things where before I just considered it all manipulative woo or self-delusion. I also think it paved the way to my being able to appreciate Wittgenstein's ideas (the ones I can grasp anyway). I read through a few different translations of the TTC, two of which had commentaries. Both the text and the translations had somewhat different takes. So it's definitely worth trying a few versions. Two I recommend: DC Lau's translation and Philip Ivanhoe's.
- stillconfused 3y agoRed Pine's translation, with translated historical commentaries, is the best I know in English. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556592906 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556592906 I've read the original in Classical Chinese, as well as many translations, over many years, and for me, his translation is the best and most grounded in the work itself. He is an American that has spent substantial time in Chinese monasteries, and has won prizes for his translations generally. Of course the linked version by Feng and English is a classic, and if you like it or can take some value from it, by all means enjoy it. I'd suggest skipping Stephen Mitchell or work from others that don't actually understand Chinese, as it's more likely new-age feel-good, and not the work itself. For those interested in Taoism, I'd also advise reading Zhuangzi (the best version in English I know is the comic book drawn by Tsai Chih-chung, translated by Bryan Bruya, "Zhuangzi Speaks: The Way of Nature" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691008825/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691008825/ For every person that likes Dao De Jing/Laozi, I'd recommend reading Heraclitus. For every person that likes reading Zhuangzi, I'd recommend reading Diogenes... and vice versa. I am not a student of Western classics so I don't know the best translation, but Guy Davenport's "Herakleitos and Diogenes", https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912516364 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912516364 , was good for me, and includes both.
- rramadass 3y agoOne pretty good translation is the one by Red Pine ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pine_(author) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pine_(author) ) which also contains selected commentaries from other ancient Chinese sources thus making it easier to get at the intent/meaning behind the aphorisms.
- makeitshine 3y agoI really like this translation for the feeling it gives. It leans more poetic, and is less accurate than other translations, but it's quite good.
- doomlaser 3y agoThis is my favorite edition, as it is the one I discovered from my parents' bookshelf in my early college years. Highly recommend the translation, and the photos. Lao Tsu's writing is just as relevant today as when it was originally written, thousands of years ago. The original edition from 1972 is available on Amazon, as well: https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Lao-Tsu/dp/039471833X https://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Lao-Tsu/dp/039471833X
- mackrevinack 3y agohas anyone read the translation by james legge? that's the only copy i have but i haven't got around to reading it yet. would it be better to go with something else even if i have to pay for it? https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/laozi/tao-te-ching/james-legge https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/laozi/tao-te-ching/james-l...
- ilkke 3y agoI find it extremely valuable that there are so many translations available to begin with. With this type of subject matter, where words are but crude pointers to insight, having different phrasing helps to reclaim the insights when words become too familiar.
- quickthrower2 3y agoIf we need this to understand technological things (did you learn Docker from just one manual/article for example?) we certainly must need it for spiritual things.
- vitiral 3y agoMany would say we need fewer concepts to understand spiritual things, and Taoism is the attempt to unlearn your grasping mind. Instead we always have more. So it goes.
- quickthrower2 3y agoThat is like saying it is easy to fast for 14 days, because there is less cooking needed. Yes that is true technically. But for a mind and body geared towards a modern diet, it would be hell. At least for the first few days.
- cwmoore 3y agoA cup that cannot be empty cannot be filled.
- quickthrower2 3y agoSaid the sommelier
- cwmoore 3y agoIrreverent and irrelevant but: what's in a label?
- gizajob 3y agoIt’s more like a commentary on the cup being considered as important to us - the material, the container, the craft, the use it brings… but the nothingness inside the cup, the emptiness always there waiting to be filled is as important to the equation of the cup’s being as the material, and the material is fixed and hard, while the emptiness is eternally ready to be shaped by anything that we might wish it to become.
- david90 3y agoAs a Chinese speaker and reader, this is more readable then the original text :D
- driggs 3y agoIf you can find the oversized print copy of this Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English translation, originally published by Random House, it is one of the most visually inspiring books to read: https://eheart.com/TAO/TTC/TTCchapters-small.pdf https://eheart.com/TAO/TTC/TTCchapters-small.pdf Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English were married (by Alan Watts!), and each chapter of the book includes inspiring black-and-white photography by English, with artful Chinese calligraphy from Gia-Fu. They also published a translation of Chuang Tzu in the same beautiful format.
- eigenhombre 3y agoThis translation was my introduction to the text, and is still my favorite. Though I've seen other translations I prefer purely on a textual basis, I find their combination of photos, handwritten calligraphy, and English text very powerful still. (Parenthetically, I got to meet English about twenty years ago and have her inscription in my copy of the book. She studied high energy physics at Madison about twenty years before I did.)
- softwaredoug 3y agoLooks beautiful - is this that edition? https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/180810/tao-te-ching-by-lao-tsu-trans-gia-fu-feng-and-jane-english-with-toinette-lippe-intro-jacob-needleman/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/180810/tao-te-ching...
- driggs 3y agoThe original was published by Random House in 1972; mine is a 25th anniversary copy published by Vintage in 1997. The one you link to, published by Penguin - Random House in 2011, says "Jane English and her long-time editor, Toinette Lippe, have refreshed and revised the translation" and that it "features over a hundred new photographs by Jane English", so seems like it might be a 2.0 version. I'm sure it's beautiful and inspiring as well, but I've only personally read the original version.
- agumonkey 3y agoI started reading but it's so abstract and poetic I can't extract any information from it. Is it the kind of thing that hit you months after you read it ?
- gizajob 3y agoEither upon reading, or seconds, minutes, days, weeks, years later.
- JLangley 3y agoThis book (this translation) is a treasure! I first found it in the early 80s I believe, and then just a year ago I found several copies in a used/vintage book store and bought multiple copies for my family! For me, personally, the translation REALLY resonates and can provide heartfelt insights. Also, the images are outstanding, and perhaps are a significant aspect to why this book was so impactful to me. THANK YOU for posting this link! It's also worth pointing out this one to a pdf [with images](https://eheart.com/TAO/TTC/TTCchapters-small.pdf https://eheart.com/TAO/TTC/TTCchapters-small.pdf)
- secretcombos 3y agoI wrote, with the help of ChatGPT-4, a Christian adaptation of the Dao De Jing called "The Dove & the Dao": http://doveandthedao.com http://doveandthedao.com. I consulted many translations and commentaries and tried to find where Christianity and Daoism harmonized. Where I couldn't, I adapted it to Christian theology. It was an obsessive endeavor that broke my eyesight due to eyestrain (editing on a smartphone is not recommended) but it's one I was finally able to strike off the bucket list.
- xelxebar 3y agoOh cool! People here might appreciate this rendition: http://www.nam21.sakura.ne.jp/tao/ Along with diagrams of how various sections relate to each other, it's also a multi-text version with "the original" along side traditional Japanese readings, a Japanese translation, and an English translation.
- browningstreet 3y agoHow are you supposed to read the Tao Te Ching? I’ve picked up a few copies and didn’t quite understand.
- softwaredoug 3y agoThey’re like koans worth contemplating. Not usually direct advice (though that’s there too!). Taoism is about the limitations of our ability to comprehend and “name” things. So by definition it would say we cannot have a literal understanding of the Dao or the universe. A lot of Taoism is about opposites. Both coexisting / feeding on each other and they’re waxing and waning. You can’t achieve victory without inevitably seeing what you fought for defeated. Learning and unlearning. Power through subservience, etc Taoism is also about the connection to the natural state of things. In terms of physics this is about things unfolding in a way towards highest entropy and lowest potential energy. I see it as a reminder of both how transitory and eternal life / the universe is. We’re all part of an ongoing flow. It’s a way of finding balance, and a degree of tranquility, as a mortal in this world
- browningstreet 3y agoThank you.
- jayavanth 3y agoYou should revisit the book in a few years. Tao can't be explained. It's something that should be experienced first-hand. Chapter 1 says: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. There are several ways to experience it even if it's transitory: Being in nature, Deep meditation, Flow states during any activity, sensory enhancement/depravation (e.g. float tank), Psychoactive substances (last option) etc.
- Foofoobar12345 3y agoI read it while under the influence of some psychedelics; all the dots connected, and it instantly clicked. YMMV.