( Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching Word by Word



Laozi - Daodejing

( Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching ) Word by Word

Two Literal English Translations One Simple, One Complex,

The Chinese Text and a Pinyin Transcription

by Bradford Hatcher

Copyright ? 2009, Bradford Hatcher, All Rights Reserved 1st Edition, Published in Nucla, CO: , 2009 Find Current Information at DDCS 299.51.... LAO .... LCCN BL 1900 L26 E5 .... ISBN 978-0-9824191-0-6

Table of Contents

Section A - A Simple Translation

1

Introduction

1

A Simple Translation

7

Footnotes

49

Section B - A Matrix Translation and Chinese Text 51

Introduction and Search Tips

51

A Matrix Translation

55

Common Variations in the Text

195

Guodian Index

203

Section C - Glossary

207

Words

209

Characters Not in the Glossary

235

Common Words

253

Phrases and Idioms

254

Pronouncing Pinyin Chinese

256

Pinyin to Wade-Giles Conversion

258

Section D - Bibliography

259-265

Introduction

With more than a hundred English translations of this little book in print it has become customary to begin each new version with an apology explaining the need for yet another English version. But this one may come as a surprise to many readers: nobody has yet attempted a rigorously literal translation of the Dao De Jing. Nobody has produced a stand-alone English version wherein all of the Chinese words are represented by English counterparts. And nobody has yet attempted a translation which fully resists the temptation to insert grammatical subjects and genders which do not exist in the Chinese original.

However a number of translators have demonstrated an admirable respect for the original Chinese text and there exist many fine to passable translations, even if not strictly literal. My own favorites are highlighted in bold in the Bibliography. Further, several versions have provided readers with English equivalents alongside each of the Chinese characters. These too are noted in the bibliography. Unfortunately most do not mention which of the many variations in the text are being used or point out places where other versions differ. Typos are usually a problem with these as well.

There are several reasons for such a confusion of books. The most obvious is that there exists a large popular market for this book, while most of the readers within this market know next to nothing about the Old Chinese language. They seem to trust that publishing house editors, or the reviewers quoted on the covers, are more knowledgeable. This is not the case. But there is a still deeper source of confusion: the original work is not that much better understood in Chinese than in English. Thousands of volumes of interpretation exist in the Chinese language, dating as far back as Wang Bi and Heshang Gong in the third century CE. Interpretations tend to follow schools of thought and the cumulative error that this often entails. Often systems of thought which were in some way derived from Lao Zi are used retroactively to interpret the meaning of the source text. The original's language is terse, ambiguous in places, and full of word play. The Old Chinese language itself has no set parts of speech, no tense, gender, voice, mood, plurals, etc. In many ways it resembles Tarot cards more than it does conventional language: most words carry a large number of possible translations, in many parts of speech, and intended meanings do not become clearer until studied in their more limiting contexts. The fact that the original is rhymed is not as important as some scholars seem to think: with only 411 syllables, rhyming in the Chinese language is easy. But where the book makes effort to rhyme it often makes the grammar less familiar. Finally, hundreds of older editions exist, and rarely will two be found which agree word for word throughout. Choices must often be made between these.

As the book began to be translated into languages other than Chinese, a few more interpretive problems entered the picture. The earliest editions were authored by Christian missionaries. These formed a substratum of schol-

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