Benjamin Hoff's "Tao Te Ching"

[treebuffalo]

[wandelaar]

I guess that book is in Chinese...?

Edited May 24, 2022 by wandelaar

[Cobie]

‘Dao Is Open’ ( http://www.daoisopen.com/index.html ) has the English too.

E.g. Ch 2 at 

http://www.daoisopen.com/A6toA9Chapters64b37632.html

and

http://www.daoisopen.com/A9toA10Chapters232.html 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by Cobie

[Cobie]

It’s pretty amazing really, quite a few of the characters have hardly changed at all over 2300 years!

E.g.the first two characters of Ch 2 , 天下 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by Cobie

[treebuffalo]

19 hours ago, wandelaar said:

I guess that book is in Chinese...?

Yes. There are no English versions as far as I know. Even books on seal script are almost non-existent in English. 

[Cobie]

 There is an English version that has all the strips pictured. 

 

It is on on DIO. 
 

It has the Guodian characters.

 

 And it has the English transcripts and their meanings next to it. 
 

See https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/53660-benjamin-hoffs-tao-te-ching/?do=findComment&comment=983348 

 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Cobie

[wandelaar]

Yes, that is better than Hoff. But how are we to know how good or bad the DIO transcription is? What sources and reasoning's have been used to arrive at this particular transcription? What are the qualifications of the author of the DIO site?

[Cobie]

6 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

… how are we to know how good or bad the DIO transcription is? …

I checked about 20 of their DDJ transcripts and they are identical * to Henricks.

 

* some exceptions, very rare indeed and mostly explainable 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Cobie

[wandelaar]

That shows that the DIO transcripts are about as good or bad as Henricks' transcripts. But Hoff claims that the original characters often have different meanings than the traditional characters in which they are usually transcribed and that those different meanings have been ignored by all western scholars before him. So Hoff would probably regard the transcription on the  DIO site as equally doubtful. - I'm playing the Devil's Advocate here. ;-)

[Cobie]

 

14 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

That shows that the DIO transcripts are about as good or bad as Henricks' transcripts. …

 

Henricks is a very highly esteemed Sinologist. : )

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Cobie

[Cobie]

 

 

11 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

… Hoff claims …

Hoff imo has been entirely discredited.
See https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/53660-benjamin-hoffs-tao-te-ching/?do=findComment&comment=983300

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Cobie

[Cobie]

12 minutes ago, wandelaar said:

… I'm playing the Devil's Advocate here. ;-)

 
Mooi zo. : )

[wandelaar]

There still remains one point on which Hoff just might be correct: the possibly different meanings of the original characters as compared to the traditional characters in which they are usually transcribed.

[Cobie]

2 hours ago, wandelaar said:

… the original characters as compared to the traditional characters in which they are usually transcribed.

How did you get on with the academic paper?

* https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/53660-benjamin-hoffs-tao-te-ching/?do=findComment&comment=982333

 

 

Edited May 25, 2022 by Cobie

[treebuffalo]

Yeah I've been on Dao is Open. The sites been up for years. But as Wandelaar points out, there are no citations or bibliography. And the site admin doesn't respond to inquiries. So its even less reliable than say, me, since I at least tell you what editions I'm looking at. 

 

There's another website called earlywomenmasters.net that also has a lot of seal script translations, which is only a step up from DIO. They post an extensive bibliography, but none of which seem to source the seal script. They also do not respond to inquiries. 

 

[wandelaar]

5 hours ago, Cobie said:

How did you get on with the academic paper?

* https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/53660-benjamin-hoffs-tao-te-ching/?do=findComment&comment=982333

 

 

 

I have been very busy with my old bicycle. I had a flat tire, but it turned out to be impossible to patch the tire. So I bought a new tire, but then I discovered that several spokes of the wheel were snapped. As it was already a worn out bicycle I decided to buy another cheap secondhand bike, but as it turned out there's a lot of work to do on that one before I can safely use it. Happily I'm free tomorrow, so I can further "refurbish" the bike. - So, as you will understand the article had to wait... ;-)

 

[Cobie]

11 hours ago, wandelaar said:

…  "refurbish" the bike. …

Righto. Succes ermee. : )

[Cobie]

12 hours ago, treebuffalo said:

… earlywomenmasters.net …

Do you have a link? All I found online was an ‘art’ site, noting about Chinese scripts. : (

 

 

Edited May 26, 2022 by Cobie

[treebuffalo]

5 hours ago, Cobie said:

Do you have a link? All I found online was an ‘art’ site, noting about Chinese scripts. : (

 

 

That's it. Here's the page with DDJ index. the script is mixed in with the different chapter translations. http://www.earlywomenmasters.net/tao/index.html

[wandelaar]

Quote

The recovered cache of texts comprises a total of 804 bamboo slips, of which 730 are intact, and bear 12,072 Chu-script graphs, which it is assumed, were brush-written on the bamboo slips close to the time of burial. See Jingmenshi Bowuguan (荊門市博物 館) ed., Guodian Chumu zhujian(郭店楚墓竹簡), Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 1998, p. 1.

 

Source: https://www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/5ea1435f0cb4e.pdf (p.104)

 

So the Guodian "Lao tzu" is assumed to be brush-written. Which leaves the question what pre-writing brush characters Hoff is talking about...

Edited June 3, 2022 by wandelaar

[Cobie]

11 hours ago, wandelaar said:

… Which leaves the question what pre-writing brush characters Hoff is talking about...

Exactly. Excellent speurwerk! 👍

 

 

Edited June 3, 2022 by Cobie

[Galactic Traveler]

I own Hoff's version.

 

Its an ok translation.  He bases his translation on that he self studied how to read CHinese and that the interpretations of some material by most people are wrong because in the era of when the TTC was written they did not supposedly speak and write like today.

 

Hoff also claims he is one of a handful translators who actually are practicing Taoists. Huge claim I think.

 

Lastly, in his notes on some chapters he has a tendancy to go on environmental social justice rampages.  And many of his "facts" about the environment are flat out wrong and climate warming fear mongering.

 

 

[Galactic Traveler]

My favorite versions :

 

Red Pine

Hua CHing-Ni

Dan Reid, which includes Heshang Gong commentaries

Yi Wu

 

 

[wandelaar]

19 minutes ago, Galactic Traveler said:

I own Hoff's version.

 

Its an ok translation.  He bases his translation on that he self studied how to read CHinese and that the interpretations of some material by most people are wrong because in the era of when the TTC was written they did not supposedly speak and write like today.

 

The fact that the Chinese used in the TTC at the time it was written differs from today's Chinese is common knowledge among sinologists. The idea that Hoff is one of the first to have noticed this is absurd. So the question remains as to what are the additional sources about the original Chinese used in the TTC that Hoff used to come to his supposedly improved translation? Do you have an answer on that? And if not - how do you know that his translation is OK?

Edited January 26, 2023 by wandelaar

[Dao Hu]

On 2022/5/16 at 8:50 PM, Cobie said:

I read the sample chapters (Ch 1-4) in the preview.  Imo they are in the same range as all the other translations. 
 

 

Well, he seems to get inventive both with grammar
故常無欲，以觀其妙；常有欲，以觀其徼。which he translates as "Consistently desire Without-form In order to study its mysteries. Consistently desire Has-form In order to study in frontiers" --  here I'd probably object to the syntax interpretation, since the predicate should go before the object, as it is in english:  故[therefore] 常[permanent, always, normal] 無[have not] 欲[desire, want]，以[thus, thereby] 觀[see in detail,] 其[its, his, hers] 妙[mysterious, subtle, exquisite]；常[permanent, always, normal] 有[be, have]欲[desire, want]，以[thus, thereby] 觀[see in detail] 其[its, his, hers] 徼[border, limit]。 Therefore I'd suggest a translation like: Therefore, always having no desires [one] thereby observes (comprehends) one’s subtleness (hidden perfection).  Always having desires [one] thereby [merely] observes one’s [outer] limits."