Tao te ching_ annotated & explained - Derek Lin [8]
My Approach
When I began translating the Tao Te Ching, I quickly realized that I needed a plan to avoid potential pitfalls and ensure as much accuracy and authenticity as possible. None of the commercially available translations withstood scrutiny. If I wished to produce a different result, I should try an approach not previously taken. Over time, I settled on the following four methods:
Start from scratch and create an entirely original work. I could not use existing translations as references because they were not sufficiently accurate. Any similarity between this translation and others would be purely coincidental.
Overcome the English-Chinese language barrier by bringing native fluency of both languages to the project. This alone would address many issues, since nearly all Tao Te Ching translators possess unbalanced levels of language proficiency.
Reference Chinese commentaries. The unbroken tradition of Tao Te Ching teachings began two thousand years ago and has continued to the present time. Although no living person can claim to possess native fluency in ancient Chinese, the commentaries give us the next best thing. They are like a window to the past.
Consult the ultimate experts on the Tao. I was fortunate in having access to Taoist masters from the I-Kuan Tao lineage. Their knowledge of the Tao comes from lifelong study as well as practical application. I drew upon their knowledge to make my presentation of the Tao as authentic as possible; I also followed their example in putting the Tao to the test, to verify its truth through actual usage.
As I followed this plan, I continued to compare my work in progress with existing translations and noticed an additional problem common to them all: a tendency to blur the line between translation and interpretation. A literal translation (also known as formal equivalence) is the nearest linguistic equivalent between the source and target language, while an interpretation (also known as dynamic equivalence) consists of amplifications and clarifications, and so contains a lot more of the translator’s personal opinions. Existing translations tended to present interpretations as translations.
Much of this was due to format. Most editions included few or no annotations or explanations, so the translator perhaps felt compelled to explain the original within the translation itself. This process necessarily engaged the translator’s understanding. Thus, what might have started out as a literal translation got twisted more and more into an expression of the translator’s thoughts.
This is why the volume you now hold in your hands is so revolutionary. Its format allows for an extremely faithful rendition of the original that adds nothing and subtracts nothing, while providing explanations on the opposite page, clearly marked as such. With this format, I can preserve the original and still clarify its meaning, and you will never have to wonder whether some particular words come from Lao Tzu or from me. The difference between the two will be unmistakable, so you can judge the interpretation for yourself.
Pronunciation and Romanization
One of the first specific challenges I had to address in creating a new translation concerned how to spell words in English to reflect their pronunciation in Chinese. For example, although Tao is traditionally spelled with the letter t, it is meant to be pronounced with the d sound, like Dow in Dow Jones. Similarly, Tao Te Ching should be pronounced like Dao De Jing. There are other terms in the study of the Tao that do not sound like the way they look. This is the result of romanization—the transliteration of Chinese characters using English letters