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Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke,

Yes, so much is lost. 道可道 This is three words: 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life 可 -- ke, this generally is used today to indicate capability, actuality or acceptability: something is possible or something is actually true 道 -- same as the first one Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words?

sdwr 2y ago
How does that work? Where's the negation?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jhedwards 2y ago
  They left out the second half of the sentence: 非 [not] 常 [eternal] 道 [way] Classical Chinese is highly contextual, and characters take on different meanings depending on the position in the sentence and the narrative context, hence the second instance of 道 meaning "speak, expound" instead of "way, method". My favorite instance of this is from the Zhuangzi: 物 [thing] 物 [thing] 而 [and/under those conditions] 不 [not] 物 [thing] 于 [among] 物 [things] Which translates to "treat the things of the world as things, but don't be a thing among them" which means that you should use strategic thinking to avoid becoming a victim of circumstances.
- solidsnack9000 2y ago
  This is not even getting to that; but that is actually pretty simple, to be fair. The negation is: 非常道非 -- fei, this has been a negator for a very long time in Chinese 常 -- chang, this means something like common, usual, normal, or nominal (I suspect that translating this as "eternal" is a creative move on the part of some westerner) 道 -- dao, the way again Nowadays, 非常 as a compound is used to mean "extraordinary" ("not normal", "exceptional"); but it is not hard to see how it might be taken to negate 道 here.
  - canjobear 2y ago
    Interestingly the 常 was originally 恒, meaning “constant,” in the oldest manuscripts. It got changed to 常 because it was taboo to write any character appearing in the given name of an Enperor, and Emperor Wen of Han had the given name 恒.
xarope 2y ago
the way has many ways yet are not the way (I'm sure someone can put on their yoda hat and do even better!)
- t-3 2y ago
  My long-aborted attempt at a poetic translation of the first few lines: The road which can be walked is well trodden The name which can be said is said often The universe was born with no witness But we can know the origin of everything in it
mbivert 2y ago
> Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words? I think it's fair to say that written Chinese simply allows to encode more information than English. So it's "physically impossible": translation from Chinese is a lossy operation. We can only provide a reasonable approximation. Even at the character level, some information just can't get through. "道" for example contains both "辶" (to walk) and "首" (head, chief, first (occasion, thing, etc)). In addition to the usual meanings, we could derive some further meanings, coherent in this context, with a "philosophical" approach to life (e.g. "the state of mind of someone who moves forward, one step at a time, without rushing").
- jerf 2y ago
  Native English speakers, and especially native English speakers who do not have fluency in another language, also often have a "familiarity breeds contempt" situation going on with their own language and are not aware of the fact that English is also a rich language, filled with cultural allusions, subtleties in the connotations versus the denotations, rich histories than span continents behind many words, distinct poetical traditions, and many other quirks. It isn't just Chinese -> English that loses information. The other direction does too. They are two languages that spent thousands of years estranged from each other, so, unlike the European languages which are all different but coevolved, they are both different from each other in a lot of ways. The richness of languages that have grown apart from each other inhibits translations in both directions not just because the concepts in the original language are not precisely present in the other, but also because you can't help but invoke the rich concepts of the target language that don't match. I'm sure a Chinese person reading just this very post could write about the implications carried in the word "continent" and how that is wrapped around a lot of cultural assumptions around how things are separated (if you don't know what I mean, google around for discussions around "how many continents are there"), the etymology of "quirk" and its many nuances, the connotations embedded in the word "estranged" and why I chose that one over, say, the more neutral "separated", the implications behind "coevolved", and make English sound as amazing as English speakers make Chinese sound... and that would be because both are correct.
  - mbivert 2y ago
lo_zamoyski 2y ago
> 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life Some relate Tao to Logos from the Greek, and as in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. The meaning of Logos is quite complex[0], and the typical translation into most languages as "word" is grossly inadequate. And so, if Christ is the Incarnate Logos, and Tao is Logos, then Christ is the Incarnate Tao. And John 14:6 reads "I am the _way_, and the truth, and the life.". (Hieromonk Damascene has written a book on exactly this subject[1].) These have also been related to Rta, Asha, and Ma'at. [0] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=lo%2Fgos&la=greek&can=lo%2Fgos0#lexicon https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=lo%2Fgos&la=gre... [1] https://a.co/d/0btyDy8i https://a.co/d/0btyDy8i
- solidsnack9000 2y ago
  That is not really translation, though, once you start doing that.
- theonemind 2y ago
  One big difference, if I understand correctly, considering that I think I understand Tao better than Logos, is that Tao is definitely purposeless and kind of pluralistic, which seems rooted in Chinese culture, whereas Logos seems to me to lean more toward purposive and not pluralistic. Like, Chinese culture has a big thing for filial piety--one's ancestors, as your creators, with the lack of a 'central power', seem to catch up some of the sovereignty that logos would attribute closer to the divine. In Chinese culture, it's not some weird divine abstract thing you owe existence to, it's just your ancestors. Taoism seems to talk of 'heaven and earth', but 'heaven' seems like the collective of little sovereignties like the emperor, your parents, and simple the pattern of nature itself, the pluralistic part. 'Heaven' doesn't seem like a monolithic entity. In regard to being purposeless, purpose seems acknowledged as emergent, and subservient, like 'the way that can be named is not the eternal way'--there's naming, purpose, and then subservience. It's harder to think of more concrete examples, and it's a bit easy to confuse an acknowledgment of pattern with purpose, but taoism seems rather critical of purposive action on the whole.
j45 2y ago
Thank you for sharing this I was gifted with one translation of the Tao Te Ching. While a translation in hindsight I found it to be one that resonated the most. I am pretty sure this is an online version of it but will have to check. “ The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery.” https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu01.html https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu01.html
nine_k 2y ago
I suppose that wenyan is not a normal spoken language [1], but a form of a literary encoding, more like poetry meeting stenography, and a way to crystallize the meaning without excessive syntax. English translation requires many more words because a "normal", vernacular Chinese rendition would also require many more words. My suggestion is to assume quotes: "Dao which is 'dao' is not true dao", that is, the mere word "dao" (and, by extension, any more descriptive and explanatory words) is insufficient to convey the meaning of true dao. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese#Grammar_and_lexicon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese#Grammar_an...
- canjobear 2y ago
  It was a bona fide spoken language at the time the Daodejing was written. Likely sounding very little like modern Chinese.
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    It was likely an inflected language at the time it was spoken, and they just left the tedious grammar bits out when writing.
  - solidsnack9000 2y ago
    Well, probably not, no -- I'm pretty sure the Daodejing was written in a literary language quite distinct from any spoken language at that time. This used to be something readily found all over the world.
canjobear 2y ago
The really impossible thing to translate into English here is that 道 was also the verb “to say.” So 道可道 is a pun that could mean “the way that can be trod” or “the way that can be said.”
oneshtein 2y ago
The Dao is beyond words. The reality is ineffable.
SpaceGlow 2y ago
So... Roadable road?

sdwr 2y ago

How does that work? Where's the negation?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jhedwards 2y ago
They left out the second half of the sentence: 非 [not] 常 [eternal] 道 [way] Classical Chinese is highly contextual, and characters take on different meanings depending on the position in the sentence and the narrative context, hence the second instance of 道 meaning "speak, expound" instead of "way, method". My favorite instance of this is from the Zhuangzi: 物 [thing] 物 [thing] 而 [and/under those conditions] 不 [not] 物 [thing] 于 [among] 物 [things] Which translates to "treat the things of the world as things, but don't be a thing among them" which means that you should use strategic thinking to avoid becoming a victim of circumstances.
solidsnack9000 2y ago
This is not even getting to that; but that is actually pretty simple, to be fair. The negation is: 非常道非 -- fei, this has been a negator for a very long time in Chinese 常 -- chang, this means something like common, usual, normal, or nominal (I suspect that translating this as "eternal" is a creative move on the part of some westerner) 道 -- dao, the way again Nowadays, 非常 as a compound is used to mean "extraordinary" ("not normal", "exceptional"); but it is not hard to see how it might be taken to negate 道 here.
- canjobear 2y ago
  Interestingly the 常 was originally 恒, meaning “constant,” in the oldest manuscripts. It got changed to 常 because it was taboo to write any character appearing in the given name of an Enperor, and Emperor Wen of Han had the given name 恒.

xarope 2y ago

the way has many ways yet are not the way (I'm sure someone can put on their yoda hat and do even better!)

t-3 2y ago
My long-aborted attempt at a poetic translation of the first few lines: The road which can be walked is well trodden The name which can be said is said often The universe was born with no witness But we can know the origin of everything in it

mbivert 2y ago

> Now how do we translate this into ten or more English words? I think it's fair to say that written Chinese simply allows to encode more information than English. So it's "physically impossible": translation from Chinese is a lossy operation. We can only provide a reasonable approximation. Even at the character level, some information just can't get through. "道" for example contains both "辶" (to walk) and "首" (head, chief, first (occasion, thing, etc)). In addition to the usual meanings, we could derive some further meanings, coherent in this context, with a "philosophical" approach to life (e.g. "the state of mind of someone who moves forward, one step at a time, without rushing").

jerf 2y ago
Native English speakers, and especially native English speakers who do not have fluency in another language, also often have a "familiarity breeds contempt" situation going on with their own language and are not aware of the fact that English is also a rich language, filled with cultural allusions, subtleties in the connotations versus the denotations, rich histories than span continents behind many words, distinct poetical traditions, and many other quirks. It isn't just Chinese -> English that loses information. The other direction does too. They are two languages that spent thousands of years estranged from each other, so, unlike the European languages which are all different but coevolved, they are both different from each other in a lot of ways. The richness of languages that have grown apart from each other inhibits translations in both directions not just because the concepts in the original language are not precisely present in the other, but also because you can't help but invoke the rich concepts of the target language that don't match. I'm sure a Chinese person reading just this very post could write about the implications carried in the word "continent" and how that is wrapped around a lot of cultural assumptions around how things are separated (if you don't know what I mean, google around for discussions around "how many continents are there"), the etymology of "quirk" and its many nuances, the connotations embedded in the word "estranged" and why I chose that one over, say, the more neutral "separated", the implications behind "coevolved", and make English sound as amazing as English speakers make Chinese sound... and that would be because both are correct.
- mbivert 2y ago

lo_zamoyski 2y ago

> 道 -- dao, it means literally a road or path; metaphorically, it used to mean a spiritual way of life Some relate Tao to Logos from the Greek, and as in the first chapter of the Gospel of John. The meaning of Logos is quite complex[0], and the typical translation into most languages as "word" is grossly inadequate. And so, if Christ is the Incarnate Logos, and Tao is Logos, then Christ is the Incarnate Tao. And John 14:6 reads "I am the _way_, and the truth, and the life.". (Hieromonk Damascene has written a book on exactly this subject[1].) These have also been related to Rta, Asha, and Ma'at. [0] https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=lo%2Fgos&la=greek&can=lo%2Fgos0#lexicon https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=lo%2Fgos&la=gre... [1] https://a.co/d/0btyDy8i https://a.co/d/0btyDy8i

solidsnack9000 2y ago
That is not really translation, though, once you start doing that.
theonemind 2y ago
One big difference, if I understand correctly, considering that I think I understand Tao better than Logos, is that Tao is definitely purposeless and kind of pluralistic, which seems rooted in Chinese culture, whereas Logos seems to me to lean more toward purposive and not pluralistic. Like, Chinese culture has a big thing for filial piety--one's ancestors, as your creators, with the lack of a 'central power', seem to catch up some of the sovereignty that logos would attribute closer to the divine. In Chinese culture, it's not some weird divine abstract thing you owe existence to, it's just your ancestors. Taoism seems to talk of 'heaven and earth', but 'heaven' seems like the collective of little sovereignties like the emperor, your parents, and simple the pattern of nature itself, the pluralistic part. 'Heaven' doesn't seem like a monolithic entity. In regard to being purposeless, purpose seems acknowledged as emergent, and subservient, like 'the way that can be named is not the eternal way'--there's naming, purpose, and then subservience. It's harder to think of more concrete examples, and it's a bit easy to confuse an acknowledgment of pattern with purpose, but taoism seems rather critical of purposive action on the whole.

j45 2y ago

Thank you for sharing this I was gifted with one translation of the Tao Te Ching. While a translation in hindsight I found it to be one that resonated the most. I am pretty sure this is an online version of it but will have to check. “ The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery.” https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu01.html https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu01.html

nine_k 2y ago

I suppose that wenyan is not a normal spoken language [1], but a form of a literary encoding, more like poetry meeting stenography, and a way to crystallize the meaning without excessive syntax. English translation requires many more words because a "normal", vernacular Chinese rendition would also require many more words. My suggestion is to assume quotes: "Dao which is 'dao' is not true dao", that is, the mere word "dao" (and, by extension, any more descriptive and explanatory words) is insufficient to convey the meaning of true dao. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese#Grammar_and_lexicon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese#Grammar_an...

canjobear 2y ago
It was a bona fide spoken language at the time the Daodejing was written. Likely sounding very little like modern Chinese.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  It was likely an inflected language at the time it was spoken, and they just left the tedious grammar bits out when writing.
- solidsnack9000 2y ago
  Well, probably not, no -- I'm pretty sure the Daodejing was written in a literary language quite distinct from any spoken language at that time. This used to be something readily found all over the world.

canjobear 2y ago

The really impossible thing to translate into English here is that 道 was also the verb “to say.” So 道可道 is a pun that could mean “the way that can be trod” or “the way that can be said.”

oneshtein 2y ago

The Dao is beyond words. The reality is ineffable.

SpaceGlow 2y ago

So... Roadable road?