Dao De Jing in Clear English: Including a Step by Step Translation - Softcover

Pepper, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 173206380X ISBN 13: 9781732063808

Publisher: Imagin8 Press, 2018

Synopsis

The Dao De Jing (also called the Tao Te Ching) was written more than 2,500 years ago and is considered one of the most important books in world literature. Coming in at only 5,000 Chinese characters, its timeless wisdom has inspired millions of people around the world and serves as one of the cornerstones of the Taoist religion.

It has been translated into English many, many times, but this new work by the best-selling writing team of Jeff Pepper and Xiao Hui Wang is much more than a translation. The authors have taken the unusual step of not just giving you the English translation, but also showing, word by word, how one gets from the original Chinese characters to the English version.

Each of the 81 short chapters contains a beautiful English translation, followed by a word-by-word and line-by-line breakdown of the chapter, showing the original Chinese, the pinyin (phonetic spelling in English characters), a word-for-word literal translation into English, and occasional helpful notes to help the reader better understand the translation. The result is a book that can be read casually, or studied carefully, or anything in between.
This new translation expresses the DDJ in simple language that anyone can access. In their Authors' Notes they say: "This is a book for ordinary people, not scholars. Many DDJ translations have been created by scholars for other scholars, and while we have studied many of them and owe a debt of gratitude to those scholars, we feel that the DDJ’s message is simple, practical and universal, and we want everyone to have the chance to benefit from it. We try to follow the guidance of Laozi in Chapter 70, who tells us, in his usual elliptical way: "My words are very easy to understand, very easy to practice. In this world, they can’t be understood, and can’t be practiced."

It’s impossible to do a 100% literal translation of the DDJ. Ordinary modern Chinese is quite different from Western languages, and the language used in this book is even more different. To start with, the original DDJ is extremely compact. Its verses have very few connecting words, forcing the reader to think deeply about the verse in order to tease out its underlying meaning or meanings. Some words can, depending on context, serve as nouns, verbs, adjectives or adverbs. Verbs in Chinese generally have no past, present or future tense, nouns have no gender (male/female), and no number (singular/plural). And to make things even more difficult, helpful little words like prepositions and pronouns are often missing entirely. As a result, translating literally from Chinese to English usually results in gibberish. Pepper and Wang have added just enough connecting words so that the sentence makes sense, while still expressing Laozi’s thoughts as concisely as possible. They've also tried really hard to avoid the temptation to add things that weren’t already there in order to make the sentence more readable.
A Pocket Edition of this book is also available. The Pocket Edition contains only the English translation, not the original Chinese or the detailed translation notes. It's only 114 pages vs. 380 pages, and it's a smaller size (5"x8" instead of 6"x9"), making it a better fit for the pants pocket.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: a couple of reader reviews object to our use of Simplified Chinese and feel we should have used the "original" Traditional Chinese. This shows a lack of understanding of the Chinese language. The DDJ was originally written in the 4th century BC, long before any character set that's used today. The Chinese characters in the original were probably zhuànshū (seal script), while later versions were written in lìshū (clerical script) and kǎishū (regular script) styles. Traditional characters began appearing in the 2nd century AD, and Simplified characters in the late 20th century. We chose Simplified characters because, simply, they're the most widely used today.

About this title

About the Author

Jeff Pepper (author) is President and CEO of Imagin8 Press, and has written dozens of books about Chinese language and culture. Over his thirty-five year career he has founded and led several successful computer software firms, including one that became a publicly traded company.  He's authored two software related books and was awarded three U.S. software patents. 

Dr. Xiao Hui Wang (translator) has an M.S. in Information Science, an M.D. in Medicine, a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Neuroscience, and 25 years experience in academic and clinical research. She has taught Chinese for over 10 years and has extensive experience in translating Chinese to English and English to Chinese.

From the Back Cover

People are born soft and weak,
They die hard and strong.

All creatures, grass and trees are born soft and fragile,
They die dry and withered.

Hard and strong are disciples of death,
Soft and weak are disciples of life.

An unyielding army is defeated,
An unbending tree is ready to fall.

Big and strong dwell below,
Soft and flexible dwell above.

The Dao De Jing, also called the Tao Te Ching, was originally written in the 6th century BCE by the Chinese sage Laozi. Only 5,000 Chinese characters long, its concise and beautiful wording and its profound insights into the nature of the universe make it one of the most influential books ever written.

This wonderful new book expresses the Dao De Jing in simple, contemporary language, while remaining true to the rhythms and poetic structure of the original Chinese.

A key feature of this book is an innovative step-by-step translation that lets the reader not only read the English version, but to gain deeper insights from the original Chinese text even if they don't speak or read Chinese.

Edition details

• Publisher: Imagin8 Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 173206380X
• ISBN 13: 9781732063808
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 313