A Work in Progress

There are countless translations of this indispensable text, mostly a lot of flowery horseshit that its translators confuse with profundity, or worse yet, "poetry." Versions that rhyme (shudder) are simply not worthy of consideration, ever.

Here is an excellent commentary by Kelley L. Ross:

Comments on the Tao Te Ching

This is a version that I began nearly twenty years ago, cobbled together from a half a dozen translations whose creators are long forgotten. I offer this therefore as "Translator Anonymous." It is a lean, spare version that I believe comports more with the original. Here is verse 11, my benchmark for all around literary and philosophical excellence in this work. The whole of TA's version will appear shortly as a linked hypertext.

Thirty spokes converge on a hub.
The use of the wheel depends on the emptiness therein.
Knead clay to make a bowl.
The use of the bowl depends on the emptiness therein.
Cut out doors and windows to make a house.
The use of the house depends on the emptiness therein.
Thus is something gained
by virtue of nothing.

Compare this with the esteemed Stephen Mitchell's version:

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.
We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.
We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.
We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

What a load of shit! This is, quite simply, a very poor translation and I don't even know Chinese. It violates somehow, my innate sense of brevity being the soul of wit, if not the Tao. In other respects however, Mitchell's version is very good, in fact one of my favorites. Here it is in the original Chinese:

Notice that it took Lao Tzu only six lines in the original to accomplish the task at setting forth a profound truth, where our modern day translators take eleven or twelve. Granted, ancient Chinese is a more compact form of expression than modern English. Nevertheless, almost all the translations I've read are bloated and ludicrous. As the Master himself once said:

"Truly, the greatest carver does the least cutting."