I'm looking for the best translation of the opening lines of the Dao De Jing. See these comments:...

>reading obscure chinese esotericism
This might be a good time to consider your life choices, OP, and perhaps rethink your priorities. Imagine a Chinaman in his native village roaming the Internet at eleven o'clock in the evening on a week night looking for the "best translation" of some obscure text of Celtic or Norwegian folklore--a strange picture, to put it mildly. Do you really think the eccentricities of archaic Eastern word puzzles are redeemable dissipations for a man of your age and sensibility?

daoism can be highly relevant to anyone, its not nearly as irrelevant to life as the nihilistic bullshit that frequents the postings of the average incel

Given that there dozens of translations and its such a short text, perhaps it would be better for you to read many translations and see if you can tease out what you think the true meaning is. I know that there are a few sites out there that have side by side comparisons of multiple translations.

If you keep in touch with your roots there's no harm to be done in learning about other cultures. The Chinese are actually worth studying, unlike, say, negro "literature".

Bad comparison, the Tao Te Ching is a massively relevant work in China and one of the most widely studied Chinese works outside of China. It is not obscure at all. It'd be more apt to say something like can you imagine a random Chinese person wondering what the best translation of Marcus Aurelius Meditations is, and yes I easily can.

Spoken like a true, conservative, christian, republican, locked in an echo chamber. Get out more, user. Expand your horizons, open your mind to other ideas.
Pic related is my gift to you, good luck and god speed on your journey of learning.

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Not OP

Nice bait

just know OP that there is no such thing as a "most faithful" rendering of DDJ. Even in classical Chinese it is terse to the point of ambiguity. But the ambiguity is not a flaw, it is the principal virtue of the style in which it is written.

道可道 dao can dao
非常道 not constant dao

the way people usually translate the first three characters is like "the path that can be tread" or also "the way that can be spoken." Dao means path or way, but it can also mean to express something, among many, many other functions. And any character in classical Chinese can take on the function of any part of speech. So even in the first three characters, Dao is used nominally in the first position and then verbally or as a co-verb in the second.

Anyway, it's all very complicated, so any translation will probably be more precise than the classical Chinese, and hence idiosyncratic. This is all to say you will never find "the definitive translation." There are degrees, where Stephen Mitchell, who doesn't know any Chinese, along with Ursula Leguin, is at the far worst end of the spectrum, to Hall and Ames or my personal favorite, Gu Zhengkun, former head of world philosophy at University of Peking.

Seems like pic-related (Robert G. Henricks translation, amazon.com/Lao-Tzu-Translation-Discovered-Ma-wang-tui/dp/0345370996) comes with the original text recovered from the Mawangdui Silk Texts. Does anyone have access to this raw original text or know where I can find it?

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what do you see as particularly "christian" about that post?

I have a question since you seem knowledgeable. Is the following a faithful translation of the first few lines?

The way that can be spoken is not the enduring way
The name that can be named is not the enduring name
The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth
The named is the mother of all things (?)

I've heard people translate 道可道 as "the way that can be followed" or "the way (path) that can be trodden", but I've also heard this is a bad translation (see the linked commentary in the OP).

For the next few lines the translations I've seen seem to vary widely.

Be honest: How many translations have you read?

Out of all these, who is closest to the Tao?
>Yet the people of one state will grow old and die without having had any dealings with those of another.

I mean that's a passable translation. It's grammatically and philosophically justifiable. But like I was saying, when you render it in another language, since every language is more precise than classical Chinese, it becomes more precise and hence loses the multi-valency of the original text.

Lines three and four of the first chapter are much more problematic to translate as how you divide up the characters can radically alter the interpretation.

无名天地之始 non name heaven earth 's origin
有名万物之母 is name myriad stuff 's mother

If you take the first two characters together you get "nameless" and "named," however most Chinese commentaries, from Wangbi to the present, separate the first and second characters, so you end up with "nonbeing/nothingness is called the origin of heaven and earth" and "being is called the mother of 10,000 things."

So you can' translate the third and fourth lines without simultaneously making a philosophical argument. Is Laozi getting ontological on us already? Or is still leveling it's epistemic critique on the limitations of language? The truth is it's doing both in classical Chinese, but it can usually only do one or the other when you translate it into another language.

Hall & Ames are Whiteheadians and should be avoided.

Thanks, that's good to know. Whitehead was retroactively refuted by Guenon and Parmenides, so I wouldn't want to make the mistake of reading anything with the subtle influences of his failed system

lol

Lao Tzu is Gautama Buddha in his later years

stupid chingchongs trying to appropriate Aryan Indians, Buddha actually ripped all his shit from the Hindu Upanishads, there was no connection to Taoism

buddha was actually laozi after he went west. From a Tang dynasty text, after Laozi went to India,

“He ordered all barbarians to become recluses and beg for their food thereby to control their murderous and greedy minds. He made them wear brown robes that were open at the shoulder thereby to suppress their fierce and aggressive inner natures. He had them cut and mutilate their bodies and faces thereby to show their personal status as branded and amputated criminals. He also strictly prohibited marriage and sexual intercourse among them thereby the exterminate their rebellious and contrary seed.”

Not to be crass, but you don't need texts seemingly written by stroke victims to do this. Try to de-Paul yourself and read this as it is:

>He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.

>And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage:
>But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage:
>Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

Shouts out to that meme edition that translates “the way” to “the mother” or some shit like that

>Norwegian folklore
There's a major difference, in that p*ganism is only interesting to historians, fantasy "nerds" and edgy Varg-types, whereas Daoism is one of the purest expressions of the Truth which one can get ones hands on.

I don't understand what this has to do with my question.