Key Translations & Further Reading

This page sorts the field. It explains the difference between a translation and a version, names editions worth knowing in each category, covers Chinese-language editions and secondary studies, and suggests an order. The aim is to let you tell what you are holding.

Translation and version

The most useful distinction is not between good and bad but between two different activities.

A translation is made from the Chinese by someone who reads it, and is answerable to the original line by line. A version is a reworking of existing English translations into new English, undertaken for literary or devotional effect. Several of the most widely read and most beautiful English Tao Te Chings are versions, and some of their authors say so plainly in their prefaces.

There is nothing dishonest about a version, provided it is labelled. The problem is that readers usually cannot tell, and a version's departures from the original are indistinguishable, to someone without Chinese, from a translator's considered decisions. If you want to know what the text says, you need at least one actual translation on the shelf.

A quick test: look at the front matter. Translators discuss which Chinese edition they used and what they did about variant readings. Version-makers discuss their aims and their sources in English.

Reliable plain translations

If you want one book that tells you what the Chinese says with a minimum of interpretation, start here.

D. C. Lau's translation is close, unornamented and consistently reliable, and it prints the two divisions with the chapter divisions clearly marked. It is the version most often recommended by people who work on the text. Wing-tsit Chan's translation carries philosophical notes that place each chapter in the context of Chinese thought as a whole, which makes it useful as a first scholarly reading. Philip Ivanhoe's translation is compact, accurate and made for classroom use, with helpful notes on contested passages. Moss Roberts's translation is attentive to the text's poetic form and includes substantial commentary of its own.

Arthur Waley's older version, made in the 1930s, is worth knowing about. Waley deliberately translated the book as a historical document of its period rather than as timeless wisdom, and his introduction is still one of the better short accounts of what the text was arguing against. The English is dated and the scholarship has moved, but the intention was right.

Manuscript-based translations

Two discoveries changed the textual situation, and there are translations built on each.

Robert Henricks translated the silk manuscripts from the Han tomb, presenting the text in the order those manuscripts give, with the division on virtue placed first. He later produced a translation of the bamboo-slip material from the fourth-century BC tomb, which is partial and differently arranged, together with discussion of what it shows. Between them these two books give a reader without Chinese direct access to the manuscript evidence.

Victor Mair's translation is also based on the silk manuscripts and is vigorous and well annotated; his introduction advances a comparison with Indian material that most specialists do not accept, and it should be read as an argument rather than as background.

For the excavated material studied collectively, the volume of conference papers edited by Sarah Allan and Crispin Williams is the standard reference in English.

Translations that show you the commentary

This category is the most useful and the least known, because it removes the central ambiguity about whose reading you are getting.

Red Pine's translation prints, alongside each chapter, selections from Chinese commentators spanning two thousand years. The effect is to show a Western reader for the first time that the book has been read in radically different ways inside China, and it is probably the single most instructive edition for someone who already knows the text a little.

Richard John Lynn has translated the classic together with the third-century philosophical commentary that became standard, so you can see where the metaphysical reading comes from. Alan Chan's study compares that commentary with the older longevity-oriented one and is the best treatment in English of how two commentaries produce two different books. Stephen Bokenkamp's collection of early Taoist scriptures includes a translation of the early community commentary that turned the text into a rule-book, which is essential for understanding the religious use.

Philosophical translations

Some translations are made in order to advance an interpretation, and they should be read as such.

Roger Ames and David Hall produced a translation framed by an argument that Chinese thought is best understood in terms of process rather than substance. The framing is contentious and explicitly stated, which is the right way to do it, and the glossary of terms is genuinely useful. Chad Hansen's work on Chinese thought argues a strong position about language and relativism in the early texts; it is not a translation but it will change how you read certain chapters.

Popular versions, assessed honestly

Two versions dominate the popular market and both deserve a straight account.

Stephen Mitchell's version is fluent, memorable and enormously influential; it is also not a translation, the author does not read classical Chinese, and it silently removes most of the political material and much of the strangeness. As a piece of contemplative English writing it succeeds. As a guide to what the Chinese says it is unreliable, and a reader who begins with it will need to unlearn things.

Ursula Le Guin described her own book as a rendition rather than a translation and was scrupulous about saying so. It is written with a good ear and a real feeling for the text's ironies, and she consulted scholarly versions throughout. It is still not a translation.

The general point is not that these books are worthless but that they belong in a different category, and that starting with them and stopping there produces a confident misunderstanding.

Chinese editions

If you read Chinese, the field is much clearer, because editions state which text they follow and print commentary separately.

For the two classical commentaries, modern critical editions of both the third-century philosophical commentary and the older longevity-oriented one are readily available in punctuated scholarly form. For textual criticism of the received version, Zhu Qianzhi's collation is a standard reference. For the silk manuscripts, Gao Ming's annotated edition is the usual scholarly starting point. Among modern annotated translations for general readers, Chen Guying's edition is the most widely used and includes a modern Chinese rendering alongside notes. For comparing versions systematically, Liu Xiaogan's study sets several texts side by side.

What to check in any Chinese edition: which base text it follows, whether variant readings are recorded, and whether the editor's own interpretation is kept separate from philological notes.

Studies of the text

Reading about the book is often more efficient than reading more versions of it.

The collection of essays edited by Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue covers authorship, dating, composition and reception, and is the best single place to see the scholarly debates laid out. Harold Roth's study of a related early text on inner cultivation argues that a tradition of meditative practice underlies parts of the classic, which is a significant and much-discussed position.

Studies of the period

The single most valuable book for understanding the Tao Te Ching may not be about it at all. A. C. Graham's survey of the philosophical disputes of the Warring States period explains what the various schools were arguing about, and once you can see the argument, chapters that looked like free-floating aphorisms turn into moves in a debate. Nothing else does this job as well.

A suggested order

For a reader starting from nothing: read Graham first, or at least his chapters on the Taoists, so that you know what the book is responding to. Then read Lau or Ivanhoe, for the text without ornament. Then read Red Pine, to see the commentarial variety. Then, if the historical question interests you, read Henricks on the manuscripts, and the Kohn and LaFargue essays. Read Mitchell or Le Guin whenever you like, but not first.

If your interest is the religion rather than the philosophy, read Bokenkamp's translation of the early community commentary early, because it shows the transition from book to scripture more clearly than any account of it.

Cautions

Beware any edition claiming to restore the original or authentic meaning. The manuscript evidence shows variety at the earliest point we can reach.

Beware editions with no notes. This text is ambiguous line by line, and a version that never tells you where the difficulties are has concealed them.

Beware the assumption that a beautiful English rendering is a faithful one. Some of the most literal translations read perfectly well, and some of the most lyrical have departed a long way from the Chinese.

And beware secondary books that quote the text through popular versions. If a book about Taoism quotes chapters in an obviously modern devotional register, it is not working from the Chinese.

Key points

• Hundreds of English versions exist, and a large proportion are reworkings of earlier English rather than translations.
• Check the front matter: translators discuss Chinese editions and variants, version-makers discuss aims and English sources.
• For a plain reliable reading start with Lau, Ivanhoe, Chan or Roberts.
• Henricks gives the excavated manuscripts; Red Pine gives two thousand years of Chinese commentary alongside the text.
• Mitchell and Le Guin are influential and well made but are not translations, and beginning with them creates errors to unlearn.
• Graham's survey of Warring States philosophy is arguably the most useful single book for understanding what the text is arguing against.