From a standing start, Lao-Tze accelerates with a breath-taking economy of words to paradox in one short sentence. Zero to infinity in three words.

The sentence means no more to a native speaker of Chinese than it does to an English speaker when rendered in English. But at least in Chinese, the statement syntactically is wholly normal. That is, there is nothing unusual about the sentence as a sentence. Millions of Chinese sentences are constructed on exactly the same grammatical model of noun-negative-noun. For example, take the English sentence, "A cow is not a dog." The Chinese sentence would have the structure: "cow not dog," precisely like the opening statement of Chapter 63 of the Tao Te Ching.

What causes problems for the Chinese, for translators, and for us who read what translators decide to do with such a sentence, is the paradoxical meaning. How can you "act" and "not act" at the same time?

Translating It
Religionists who swear by the inerrancy of this or that "holy" book, know little or nothing about the realities and difficulties of translation. Cervantes said it most succinctly in his observation that reading a translation is like looking at the back side of a tapestry. You can sort make out the outlines of the picture on the front, but what you mostly see is loose ends, and a lot of crisscrossing threads that go nowhere.

If you compile a list of the most-translated books, the Tao Te Ching is right up there near the top, with the Bible, the works of Shakespeare, and the writings of Marx. Hundreds of attempts have been made to get Lao-Tze into English.

A translator undertaking the Tao Te Ching faces all the usual problems of grammar, syntax, rhetoric, prosody, etc. In addition, she has to deal with the brutal fact that even the Chinese, after 2,500 years of study, still don't understand the little book with its 81 brief chapters.

In one sense, of course, that might be seen as an advantage. A translator prone to megalomania might think, "Well, nobody's understood it in Chinese; maybe I can do a sort of riff in English on the Tao Te Ching in which I finally reveal the true meaning." That in fact has happened at least once. Timothy Leary, who knew no Chinese, spent a month or two on a hillside in Nepal with a few English versions of the Tao Te Ching around him and produced a kind of "inspired-by" rendering, which was in fact published.

Academics have generally shied away from direct, full confrontation with Lao-Tze. Few Ph.D.'s have attempted a translation, opting instead to achieve tenure through commentary and alleged elucidation. Whether they have avoided translation because of a wise understanding of their own limitations, or because 81 pages is not enough for tenure, we leave the reader to decide.

We thought it might be entertaining (far be it from us to aim for "enlightening") to put together some examples of how various translators in the last 100 years have wrestled with Lao-Tze. At first we planned to choose an entire chapter as a sample. But as we began to work, it quickly became clear that those three Chinese characters pictured above would do nicely.

So, here in 20 pages is what happens when 20 translators struggle through the first 62 chapters and finally get to line one of Chapter 63 of the Tao Te Ching.** It's fascinating how much is revealed in one sentence. You often get a glimpse into the era of the translation as well as the personality of the translator. Paraphrasing an old remark about Shakespeare: It seems that every age gets the Lao-Tze it deserves. As does every person.***

R.B. Blakney.
T. Byrn.
Jim Clatfelter.
Aleister Crowley.
Gia-fu Feng.
Lionel Giles.
Robert G. Henricks.
James Legge.
Lin Yutang.
Victor H. Mair.
T. McCarroll.
Peter Merel.
Stephen Mitchell.
Charles Muller.
Ni Hua-Ching.
Stan Rosenthal.
Henry Wei.
Richard Wilhelm.
Anonymous 1992.
Anonymous 2000.

*Philosophical Taoism is different from religious Taoism. Philosophical Taoism is a system of analysis based on the text of the Tao Te Ching; religious Taoism is a popular religion, orginally founded on the Tao Te Ching, which now includes all manner of ritual and spurious systems of belief, including magic, ancestor worship, and the quest for physical immortality.

**A number of the older translations are now in the public domain and are available on-line, along with several translations which have not been published on paper. You'll find various of these versions available here, and here.

***Following publication, several readers asked about my own preference. First, I have to repeat what I said above: the translations vary widely (and in some cases wildly) in tone (some calm, some obstreperous), in language (some dry and formal, some easy and relaxed, some downright slangy), and in understanding. If you have the time, the best thing to do is explore the translations and find one that speaks most strongly to you. If I had to select one of the presently available translations as a kind of "all-round best", it would be that of Stephen Mitchell. You can go to the page linked to his name in the list above and read my comments.

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