Tao te ching_ annotated & explained - Derek Lin [9]
The first Chinese romanization system was Wade-Giles, created about a hundred years ago. The earliest Western scholars who studied Chinese had neither prior work to guide them nor significant assistance from native speakers. Their system required specialized knowledge to use correctly, but that knowledge remained trapped in academic obscurity and never made it out to the mainstream. Confusion about this system is so pervasive that, even today, many who claim expertise about the Tao continue to mispronounce or misspell Chinese words. Even the Chinese themselves get confused, despite knowing how their own language sounds. They have, in effect, adopted Western mistakes as their own.
In an attempt to address this issue, Chinese scholars have created a new standard to replace Wade-Giles: the Pinyin system. This new standard resolves the problems highlighted above but introduces new ones. For instance, Pinyin’s use of the letters x, c, and q can be misleading to most English speakers. It is also likely that problems will worsen as people liberally mix the two systems without really understanding either one.
In this book, I deal with this confusing situation by using the following three guidelines:
If a term romanized with Wade-Giles is already well known, it will remain unchanged, to conform with the common, established usage.
If a term is not well known, it will be romanized with the Pinyin system to conform to the new standard established by mainland China for the future.
Wherever either system produces confusing results, pronunciation assistance will be provided parenthetically.
Holistic Understanding
Another challenge I faced in creating the most accurate translation possible has to do with the Chinese language itself, which has evolved a lot over the centuries. Many ancient characters are no longer in modern usage, and some characters have taken on new meanings. The syntax has also changed so that native speakers of modern Chinese can find the ancient form quite baffling. All of this can lead to misunderstanding. The best way to avoid this misunderstanding is to approach the Tao Te Ching as a whole and use the entire book to help us understand individual chapters.
One example to illustrate this comes from line 3 of chapter 1. It starts with the characters wu ming, which mean “not having” and “name” respectively. Together, they can be translated as “nameless.” Thus, the entire line means “The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth.” This is the classical interpretation. Another school of thought is that there should be a pause after wu, thus making it a noun instead of an adjective. The translation then becomes “The state of nonexistence is the name for the origin of Heaven and Earth” or “Nonexistence is named the origin of Heaven and Earth.” Scholars who support this new interpretation feel that it makes more sense.
The concept of punctuation marks is unknown in ancient Chinese, so there may or may not be a pause after wu. If we cannot tell one way or the other, does that mean both interpretations are equally valid? Not necessarily. We can distinguish between the two by checking other chapters of the Tao Te Ching. If wu ming is clearly used to say “nameless” in other chapters, then the classical interpretation is more likely to be correct. On the other hand, if other chapters show ming being used in the same way as the new interpretation, then that would give credence to the new interpretation.
Chapters 32, 37, and 41 all feature the use of wu ming. In these chapters, wu ming can only be translated as “nameless,” due to unambiguous context. This is a powerful endorsement of the classical interpretation. Chapter 14 demonstrates that when Lao Tzu uses ming in the way suggested by the new interpretation, he adds the character yue to remove the ambiguity. Because the yue character cannot be found anywhere in chapter 1, this becomes evidence against the new interpretation.
This example illustrates how tricky it can be for us to approach the Tao Te Ching. It also underlines the importance