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Powell's Staff:
Five Book Friday: In Memoriam
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Every year, the booksellers at Powell’s submit their Top Fives: their five favorite books that were released in 2023. It’s a list that, when put together, shows just how varied and interesting the book tastes of Powell’s booksellers are. I highly recommend digging into the recommendations — we would never lead you astray — but today...
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Brontez Purnell:
Powell’s Q&A: Brontez Purnell, author of ‘Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt’
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Starter Pack: Where to Begin with Ursula K. Le Guin
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Customer Comments
Profchan has commented on (2) products
Tao Te Ching Pocket Edition
by
Lao Tzu, Stephen Mitchell
Profchan
, May 02, 2007
Mitchell's book has a nice cover. I like the size. It's a good design. And that's about all the good things I see in it. The fact that it sells so well underscores the abysmally low level of Chinese knowledge in the U.S. and European countries. The scholars who praise this version, like Huston Smith, are themselves not knowledgeable in Chinese, and are not really qualified to evaluate it. They do praise it lavishly not necessarily due to merit, but due to mutual back-scratching in the academic world - about which I am fully qualified to comment. Some have called this "definitive" - but if you really know Chinese you will instantly see, from any chapter, that it is anything but. Each chapter (verse) in this book has about a dozen errors in the sense of omission of original concepts, additions of author's own ideas, and distortions and twists the original meaning into something that only superficially resembles the original Tao teachings. Let's take a look at one example. Chapter 60 has this line: "You spoil it with too much poking." Well, this is something added by the author, not a translation, because the orignial says absolutely nothing about spoiling the fish or poking it. The content is sparse. There's not much meat between the covers. The author uses a lot of New Age-isms and his personal philosophies to fill out the blanks where he does not understand the original. Or look at chapter 64. Between the example about the tree and the journey of a thousand miles, the orignal says "a tower of nine levels starts as accumulated dirt." This line is completely missing, possibly because Mitchell does not understand the line. Take the above mistakes and imagine them duplicated several times in every chapter, and you start to get the idea how inaccurate this translation is. I am not opposed to calling it "inspired by Lao Tzu" or "based on Lao Tzu" but to call it a translation of Lao Tzu is simply false advertising. This book has a lot of momentum and is often recommended. I fully expect it will continue to be very, very popular. For those who are interested in more authenticity as opposed to this Americanized, watered-down stuff, my recommendation is to continue your investigation, and look at the other options available to you.
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Tao Te Ching
by
Derek Lin
Profchan
, April 09, 2007
My qualifications--not to toot my own horn, just sticking to the facts--I am a senior lecturer on classical Chinese literature at the university level; I am also a professional translator of 27 years specializing in English-to-Chinese work. I have a personal interest in Chinese-to-English and do it from time to time to keep my skills sharp. As one would expect from a background like mine, I am very picky when it comes to other people's translations. A popular Tao Te Ching translation like Mitchell's may be okay for the masses, but would never measure up to my standards due to the massive mistakes it contains. It is painfully obvious to me that Mitchell doesn't know Chinese from hot rocks. I have always said that a translation by a real Chinese speaker like D.C. Lau is far superior. Until now, that is. This translation smashes all previous standards in a couple of ways. The first is that this is, as of now, the most accurate translation bar none. I may be able to do a better job myself if I devote a year or two to the task, but most of my word choices are going to be pretty close to Lin's and will probably look like plagiarization. The second is that the commentaries in this book are also the best available right now. I have one or two quibbles here and there, but have to admit that overall the commentaries range from very good to excellent. This is to me a more dramatic difference because most other Tao Te Ching books contain either no commentaries, incorrect commentaries, or more often than not dry and boring academic details that most people would not care about. One thing I really like about this translation is Lin's use of the plural form. It's a brilliant solution to an old problem. Now everyone will wonder why they didn't think of applying it to Tao Te Ching first. Also, I feel there's not enough commentaries to whet my appetite and would like to see more, perhaps in a future edition. So here is my bottom line recommendation. You can stick to whatever translation appeals to you. If you don't know Chinese, the translation quality probably won't matter to you anyway. But if you ever get a burning curiosity to know what Laozi really, really says, this book will probably be your best bet. The highest praise I can offer is this: If your translation differs significantly from this one, you can pretty much be sure that yours is wrong.
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