April 7, 2020
TRANSLATING ULTIMATE WISDOM
Let's say you get a mysterious email, written in Chinese characters. How do you tell if it is something important?
道可道，非常道。名可名，非常名。无名天地之始；有名万物之母。故常无欲，以观其妙；常有欲，以观其徼。此两者，同出而异名，同谓之玄。玄之又玄，衆妙之门。
Google Translate, normally very good, doesn't seem to work well with this message. It produces the following:
Road to Road, very Avenue.
The name can be named, the very famous. The beginning of the unknown world; the mother of all things. Therefore, there is often no desire to observe its beauty; often there is desire to observe its merits. The two are synonymous and synonymous. Mysterious and mysterious, the door of all wonders.
In that situation, you want a resource which can deal well with Chinese. The one on which I rely is https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary, a comprehensive dictionary which can provide interesting insights into the Chinese language, particularly individual sounds, words and characters.
For the text above it produced the following:
The Dao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Dao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. (Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things.
Always without desire we must be found,
If its deep mystery we would sound;
But if desire always within us be,
Its outer fringe is all that we shall see.
Under these two aspects, it is really the same; but as development takes place, it receives the different names. Together we call them the Mystery. Where the Mystery is the deepest is the gate of all that is subtle and wonderful.
Lo and behold, it's the beginning of the traditional Dao de Ching (often written Tao de Ching), attributed to Lao Tse - one of the most important messages you could ever receive.
I suspected human tampering with this translation, particularly the rhyming lines. In fact, it turns out to be entirely the 1891 translation by James Legge. So I really can't vouch for its ability to translate larger chunks of Chinese. This bit of deception however, does not detract from the overall usefulness and enjoyment of the MDGB dictionary for exploring words. (By the way, I assume it is the product of some Chinese institution, primarily because I can find no information about who is behind it.)
And that brings me to tan attempt to talk about the first chapter of the Dao de Ching, probably one of the most translated chapters in the world and likely one of the most profound. I found a site which collected about 175 different English translations of it! http://www.bopsecrets.org/gateway/passages/tao-te-ching.htm
What can I say? NOTHING! It points to something way beyond human understanding and control. And realizing that is the beginning of wisdom. That's where we start and how we try to stay on the road.
Perhaps the best translation of DAO is my version in the form of a palindrome - DAOROAD. What a happy result - it reads the same backwards and forwards and contains the translation from Chinese to English. Many years ago I tried to copyright the word DAOROAD as a poem, knowing full well that single words cannot be copyrighted.
I could use it as a trademark for a product - but what could the product possibly be? Perhaps a perfume for the person who wants to give off the aroma of enlightenment.
END
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