John answers “There are so many version of this book!...”

Shoaib Rehman asked this question about Tao Te Ching:

There are so many version of this book! Which one should I read first? https://www.bookdepository.com/search?searchTerm=+Tao+Te+Jing++Lao+Tsu&search=Find+book

John An online search will pull up a pdf with 8 translations, the Bureau of Public Secrets archive links to many, and there is an Hungarian site (in Englis…moreAn online search will pull up a pdf with 8 translations, the Bureau of Public Secrets archive links to many, and there is an Hungarian site (in English too) which has data on nearly a hundred. So far I found Ursula Le Guin's anarcho-eco-feminist "creative interpretation" congenial, if free. Jonathan Star achieves a balance of the literary and scholarly; his "definitive ed." has transliterations of each ideogram with multiple meanings so you can "assemble your own'! Gia-Fu Feng + Jane English convey the TTC in a popular version many like; I found as have others Stephen Mitchell's influenced by his Zen bent. Like ULG, SM as with many "translators" does not know classical (or modern) Chinese; they both worked from Paul Carus' 1898 transliteration. Red Pine's and David Hinton's renderings show a blend of scholarship and accessibility from two who truly know Chinese. Finally, the classical Chinese is different than the modern version, which makes me wonder if one needs to be a native speaker of modern Chinese to claim translation credibility, as some born-bilingual interpreters insist. P.S. Thomas Merton adapted Chuang Tzu's tales, unfortunately not the TTC. (less)

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