Dao De Jing in Clear English

Jeff Pepper

ISBN 10: 1732063818 / ISBN 13: 9781732063815

Published by Imagin8 LLC, 2020

Seller Inventory # LU-9781732063815

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.

This new translation, by the best-selling writing team of Jeff Pepper and Xiao Hui Wang, 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.

This Pocket Edition is a smaller and lower-cost version of the full book, "Dao De Jing in Clear English, Including a Step-by-Step Translation". It 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.

About the Author: Jeff Pepper is a writer, publisher, computer scientist and CEO. He has started and led several successful companies, authored two software related books, and holds three U.S. software patents. In 2017 he started Imagin8 Press (www.imagin8press.com) to serve English-speaking students of Chinese. In collaboration with Xiao Hui Wang, he has written six books based on the Chinese classic novel Journey to the West, as well as a groundbreaking new translation of the Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching). He received a B.S. in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught computer science. Xiao Hui Wang is a native Chinese speaker born in China. She came to the United States for studies in biomedical neuroscience and medical imaging, and has more than 25 years of experience in academic and clinical research. She has been teaching Chinese for more than 10 years, and has extensive experience translating English to Chinese as well as Chinese to English.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Dao De Jing in Clear English
Publisher: Imagin8 LLC
Publication Date: 2020
Binding: Paperback
Condition: New