On translations
There are many, many translations of the Tao Te Ching that have been produced over more than a century1. It can be difficult to pick any one edition for yourself. Fortunately there are a couple of translations which are widely recommended.
These are the translations that I’ve got on my own bookshelf:
- Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English are often praised for their poetic, flowing language. I was sold on them when I saw them translate ten thousand things instead of the more common myriad things.
- Derek Lin concentrates on accuracy, which may be less inspiring
but can be very helpful at times as well. His edition is also annotated
with explanations and notes which I personally found to be a mix of somtimes
useful and sometimes obvious.
His translation is also available online. - Stephen Mitchell’s edition is probably the easiest to understand. He aims to convey the wit and elegance of the original poetry. He does take a lot of liberties though — replacing entire phrases with something more familiar to Westerners — making this edition a bit more controversial. As he says in the foreword: “If I haven’t always translated Lao Tzu’s words, my intention has always been to translate his mind.”
My advice is to just pick one edition and get started. The philosophical aim with the Tao Te Ching is to understand the deeper meaning behind the words. If you can manage that, the specific words used aren’t important anyway. On the other hand: if you’re having trouble understanding the deeper meaning it might help to see how others have translated the same chapter.
I’d avoid the oldest translations though. They are prone to errors — which is understandable as the field of translation of ancient Chinese was very young when these editions were first published. As a a rule of thumb, stay within the last half century.