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A comment on Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997). Parent comment

Re:Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997) by nine_k on Friday July 05, 2024 @11:07PM (#40887917)
I suppose that wenyan is not a normal spoken language [1], but a form of a literary encoding, more like poetry meeting stenography, and a way to crystallize the meaning without excessive syntax.

English translation requires many more words because a "normal", vernacular Chinese rendition would also require many more words.

My suggestion is to assume quotes:

"Dao which is 'dao' is not true dao", that is, the mere word "dao" (and, by extension, any more descriptive and explanatory words) is insufficient to convey the meaning of true dao.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Chinese#Grammar_an...

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Re:Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997) by canjobear on Saturday July 06, 2024 @03:17AM (#40888711)
It was a bona fide spoken language at the time the Daodejing was written. Likely sounding very little like modern Chinese.
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Re:Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997) by otabdeveloper4 on Saturday July 06, 2024 @04:49AM (#40889082)
It was likely an inflected language at the time it was spoken, and they just left the tedious grammar bits out when writing.
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Re:Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin (1997) by solidsnack9000 on Saturday July 06, 2024 @02:53PM (#40892377)
Well, probably not, no -- I'm pretty sure the Daodejing was written in a literary language quite distinct from any spoken language at that time. This used to be something readily found all over the world.
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