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Beginning Mandarin with the Tao Te Ching | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6585 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes  2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 9 of 24 13 December 2011 at 8:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Jacob:)
This google translation is really funny. Dao De Jing is hard to read as hell. I just checked the translation and it's a bit different from the one you wrote: 天下皆知美之為美, All in the world know that the beautiful is beautiful 斯惡已 and so [they know] the ugly (because of knowing what is beautiful they know what is ugly) 皆知善之為善 all know that the good is good, 斯不善已 and so [they know] the bad (because of knowing what is good they know what is bad). 故有無相生 Therefore to exist and not exist create each other, 難易相成 difficult and easy produce one another, 長短相形 long and short stand in comparison to one another...and so on But you know.. Taoists weren't that interesting in my opinion from all the main philosophical schools back then. They were mostly looking for ways to become immortal and talking about living far away from everyone. It might be a cliche, but I liked Confucius' Analects. Especially the passages about being humble and about how people should behave in a society in order to make it work. If you really want Classical Chinese, Analects is what the language is based on and something you can still see in the Chinese society today. Edited by Vlad on 13 December 2011 at 8:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5174 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 10 of 24 13 December 2011 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's the 2nd chapter. Anyways, all the "daos" on this thread just reminded of this particular bit of awesomeness that I still remember from watching as a kid. 道道道道道道 (Cos 1 dao ain't enough.) And to be on-topic, learning Chinese from the dao de jing is a worse idea than learning English by reading Shakespeare. Edited by strikingstar on 13 December 2011 at 9:00am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 24 13 December 2011 at 9:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Holy daoism, Batman! I so want that movie! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6585 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese | Message 12 of 24 13 December 2011 at 9:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The line Jacob used google translate on was from the second chapter, wasn't it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5174 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 24 13 December 2011 at 10:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oops, sorry. Wasn't paying attention. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4773 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 14 of 24 13 December 2011 at 11:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It seems like the difference between Jacob's and Vlad's translations is because Jacob used spaces and Vlad didn't. The United States appeared there because the character for beauty, 美, is the first character in the Chinese name for the US. Ditto for 斯 and Sri Lanka.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 15 of 24 13 December 2011 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I just realized how clever this line is. The author uses the double meaning of the characters 道 and 名. 道 means "way, road" and is of course the "Tao" of taoism, but it can also mean "to say". So the author says "The dao that can be said", but uses the same character for "dao" and "said". Then he does it again with 名, using it first as a noun "The name" and then as a verb "to name". This makes me want to read the Tao Te Ching. I'd need a lot of help from commentary, but I think it'd be an interesting read, and from the looks of the bits here, it really is a clever piece of poetry. I've read it before in English, so working through the original should give me a lot of pleasure, and also strengthen my Classical Chinese skills! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Everplayer Diglot Groupie China Joined 5050 days ago 69 posts - 85 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, English Studies: Japanese, German | Message 16 of 24 13 December 2011 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Some classics such as Dao De Jing are even unreadable for native Chinese who already have a good grasp of classical Chinese. No one can guarantee you that his translations or interpretations of many lines in this book are the "correct" ones or as intended by the author.
If you want to appreciate some major Chinese philosophical classics of Confucianism and Taoism, I recommend Nan Huai Jin(南怀瑾)'s books on "Analects", "Mencius", "Dao De Jing" and "Nan Hua Jing". He uses many interesting stories and examples to elaborate the original texts while showing deep understanding of different schools of thought. (He actually wrote more books on Buddhism classics.) I heard there are English versions for some of his books. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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