Key Translations & Further Reading

This page sorts the available translations by what they are for, covers Chinese editions, names the studies that repay the effort, and suggests an order.

What to want from a translation

Four things, and no single version delivers all of them.

Accuracy on the technical passages, especially the chapter about standpoints, where a great deal turns on how a handful of particles and repeated words are handled. Preservation of the comedy, including the absurd names, the deadpan, and the timing. Some indication of the text's composite structure, so that you know which layer you are reading. And notes, because a large proportion of the allusions are to a world the reader does not have.

The practical consequence is that anyone seriously interested in the book should own two translations, one for reading and one for checking.

The complete translations

Three complete versions dominate, and they have different strengths.

Burton Watson's translation, first published in the 1960s and later revised, has been the standard for two generations. It is fluent, readable and unpretentious, and it has introduced more English readers to the book than anything else. It is also somewhat smoothed: difficulties are resolved rather than displayed, and the philosophical apparatus is light. As a first complete read it remains hard to beat.

Victor Mair's complete translation is the best on the comedy. He translates the invented names rather than transliterating them, which restores jokes that other versions silently discard, and his English has energy. Specialists disagree with some of his choices; the version is nonetheless the one most likely to convey why anyone ever called this book funny.

Brook Ziporyn's complete translation is the most recent of the three and the most philosophically alert. His terminology is carefully worked out and explained, and his companion volume of selections prints substantial extracts from traditional Chinese commentaries alongside the text, which is otherwise almost unavailable in English. If you want to see how the book was actually read in China, this is the place.

Older complete versions from the nineteenth century are freely available and consequently much encountered. They are dated in idiom and in scholarship, and they render the book far more solemn than it is.

Graham's partial translation

The most important English version is incomplete, and it needs its own section.

A. C. Graham translated the inner chapters and selections from the rest, and rearranged material according to his own analysis of the text's composite structure, grouping it by the layers described on the page about authorship. He also reconstructed what he took to be the disordered central section of the chapter on standpoints. His notes and introductions are the fullest philosophical apparatus available in any language accessible to a general reader.

Two cautions. The rearrangement is an interpretation, and a reader who begins here will not know what the received order looks like. And some of his textual decisions are contested. A companion volume of essays edited by another scholar discusses precisely these points and is the right place to see the arguments.

Despite this, if you want to understand the chapter on standpoints, Graham's treatment of it — the translation together with his separate article on it — remains the single most useful thing written in English.

Versions that are not translations

One well-known book of selections was produced by a Trappist monk working from existing translations rather than from Chinese, and he said so clearly. It is beautifully written, spiritually serious, and it made the book known to a large readership. It is also a reading rather than a rendering, and its emphases are the author's own.

The general point is the same as for the Tao Te Ching: such books are legitimate when labelled and misleading when taken for the text. If a version has no notes, no discussion of the Chinese, and no mention of textual layers, treat it as a devotional work.

Chinese editions

Reading this book in Chinese is much easier than reading the Tao Te Ching in Chinese, because it is prose with narrative context rather than compressed verse.

The standard scholarly edition assembles the third-century commentary, the Tang subcommentary and the early glossarial notes in one apparatus, and it is the edition most references cite. Another Qing collection provides a more compact commentary. Among twentieth-century works, a full critical study with collation and detailed exegesis is the reference for textual problems, and a modern annotated translation into contemporary Chinese with notes is the most widely used edition for general readers.

What to check: whether the edition prints the third-century commentary, whether it marks the three divisions, and whether its notes distinguish philological explanation from the commentator's philosophy — since that commentary is itself a strong interpretation and not a neutral gloss.

Studies of the period

As with the Tao Te Ching, the most valuable single book may be one about the age rather than the text. Graham's survey of the philosophical disputes of the Warring States sets out what each school was claiming and why, and once you can see the debate, the Zhuangzi's parodies and jokes become legible as moves against identifiable opponents. It is also, on its own, one of the best books written in English about Chinese thought.

Philosophical studies

The Zhuangzi has attracted more serious philosophical attention in English than any other Chinese text apart from the Analects, and several collections are worth knowing.

An early volume of experimental essays edited by Victor Mair opened up the range of approaches. A collection on scepticism, relativism and ethics in the Zhuangzi is the best single place to see analytic philosophers engaging with the chapter on standpoints, and it includes the main positions on whether the book is a relativist. Another collection of uneven discourses gathers work by both sinologists and philosophers and is strong on the text's structure. Livia Kohn's study of text and context is a useful survey of the scholarly situation.

For the account of skill, which is the part of the book with the most current philosophical traction, the relevant essays are scattered across journals; the collections above will point you to them, and Chris Fraser's work on late classical Chinese thought treats the epistemological issues with unusual clarity.

One book-length reading of the first three chapters, by Kuang-ming Wu, is idiosyncratic and demanding, and readers who like it like it very much.

The commentator

Since the text we read was shaped by its third-century editor, his philosophy is not optional background. Brook Ziporyn's study of that commentator's thought is the standard English treatment and explains both the doctrine of self-generation and the reinterpretation that reconciled the book with holding office.

Chinese scholarship

Several strands are worth knowing about even if you read only about them.

An early twentieth-century commentary read the chapter on standpoints through Buddhist logic and remains influential. A mid-century study argued about the relative dating of the Zhuangzi and the Tao Te Ching, which is a genuine and unresolved question. Work on the philosophy and its development traces the layers and their positions. And an influential study of Chinese aesthetics argued that this book is the origin of the Chinese artistic tradition's central commitments, which is a strong claim and a productive one.

A suggested order

For a reader starting from nothing: read Watson or Mair straight through, quickly, without worrying about what you are missing. Then read Graham's introduction and his inner chapters slowly. Then read Graham's survey of Warring States philosophy, which will retrospectively explain a great deal. Then return to the chapter on standpoints with Graham's article and one of the philosophical collections. Then, if the Chinese reception interests you, read Ziporyn's selections with the traditional commentaries.

If your interest is the influence on art and poetry rather than the arguments, read Mair for the stories, then go directly to the aesthetics literature.

Cautions

Beware translations without notes. The book is full of allusions to a lost world, and an unannotated version leaves you guessing.

Beware any account that treats the whole text as one author's work. The composite structure is not a fringe view.

Beware books that present the Zhuangzi as an early form of Chan Buddhism or as a manual of meditation. Both readings are later impositions, however venerable.

And beware solemnity. If a translation or a study never makes you laugh, it has lost something the original has on nearly every page.

Key points

• Own two translations: one for reading and one for checking, since no single version handles accuracy, comedy, structure and notes equally well.
• Watson is the readable standard, Mair is best on the humour, Ziporyn is the most philosophically careful and gives access to traditional commentaries.
• Graham's partial translation has the fullest philosophical apparatus but rearranges the text according to his own analysis.
• Popular selections made from other translations are devotional works, not renderings of the Chinese.
• The standard Chinese edition assembles the third-century commentary with later glosses, and that commentary is a strong interpretation rather than neutral explanation.
• Graham's survey of Warring States philosophy is probably the most useful single secondary book, because it makes the jokes legible as arguments.