Tao te ching_ annotated & explained - Derek Lin [11]
The first category consists of words that have been formally accepted into the English language and show up in mainstream dictionaries. They should be used in a translation whenever possible for maximum accuracy. Tao, chi, yin, and yang are good examples. Not many words enjoy this level of acceptance, so this category remains sparse. Prior to Tao becoming an English word, it was acceptable to translate dao as “the Way.” Now that Tao is part of our language, “the Way” can no longer be considered the optimal translation.
The second category consists of expressions that have a direct English equivalent. For instance, tian di means “Heaven and Earth,” an expression that already exists in English, so tian di can be translated literally. Another example is tian xia (pronounced shia), which literally means “below heaven” or “under the sky.” It can be translated as it is, except when the usage clearly means “the world.”
The character te corresponds with the word virtue in a serendipitous way. Virtue means not only a human goodness (compassion, patience, generosity, etc.) but also an inherent power in all things. For instance, when we say “by virtue of being there, he witnessed the event” we are not saying “being there” is a positive human trait. We are saying that “being there” has an inherent power that enables what follows. Te has the same dual meaning, so it should therefore be mapped to “virtue” whenever possible. Some translators use “integrity,” which loses the value of this correspondence.
The nearest equivalent to the character ching (pronounced jing) is “tome” or “classic.” The widely used convention is “book,” which has a different feel but is still acceptable. Therefore, a reasonable translation for Tao Te Ching is “Book of the Tao and Virtue.” This is more accurate than “Book of the Way and Its Virtue” or “Book of the Tao and Its Power.”
The third category consists of expressions that have no direct English equivalents and must be translated by meaning. For instance, wu wei, although well known to students of the Tao, has not yet made it into the English language. It cannot be left as it is in the translation, nor should it be translated into a misleading term such as “nonaction” or “without doing.” The closest linguistic equivalent to wu wei is “detached action,” or “acting without attachment.”
Another prominent example in this category is wan wu, which literally means “ten thousand things.” At the present time, “ten thousand things” exists in English as Taoist jargon; it is not part of the popular vernacular. Therefore, it should not be translated literally. The nearest linguistic equivalent to wan wu is “myriad things” or “all things.”
Similarly, shen ren means “divine person”—someone so wise that his or her wisdom approaches the Divine. Several past attempts to translate this have yielded poor results. For instance, “holy man” and “saint” both carry religious connotations not found in the original. Another attempt, “evolved individual,” carries the context of spiritual evolution, which is really a pet notion injected by the translator. The term “sage” is much closer to the original. (Other examples in this category, such as chien li and bai xing, can best be explained fully on the www.taoism.net website. The site offers a wealth of material specifically designed to complement this book. Please see Suggestions for Further Reading for additional details.)
A final piece of my translation work had to do with the use of punctuation. Although the concept of punctuation marks did not exist in ancient Chinese, the language did have its own specific ways of denoting various effects of speech. For example, a larger than usual gap between characters meant a slight pause, equivalent to a comma. Special characters at the end of a sentence served the same functions as the