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Old 01-03-2011, 08:22 PM   #5
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Re: Kung Fu for Philosophers

Quote:
Thomas Campbell wrote: View Post
I just got William Scott Wilson's new (2010) translation of the Tao Te Ching/Daodejing, and he's got some interesting thinking about connections between that philosopher's wellspring, later Ch'an and ultimately Zen and martial arts.

http://www.palmbeachartspaper.com/Bo...f-sources.html
Just a note about not only the translator William Scott, but this also applies to Chinese author of the NYTimes piece who is a "philosopher". Regardless of Mr. Scott's natural linguistic skills, very few people can make qualified guesses about the translations of most of the very early texts because they don't know the context and idiomatic usages, the references to fabled characters, and so on. This is a well-known problem and even the Chinese argue about who of their own scholars even has a potential chance of making an accurate translation from the ancient manuscripts, in too many cases. Many people, particularly westerners, base their translations on the literal meanings of the ideograms and totally miss the original intent. In fact, most modern-day Chinese (I've said this before) cannot translate texts about martial-arts because the context and connotations are meaningless unless the translator also has the skills, the knowledge of idiom, and so forth.

While the philosopher in the NYTimes piece is knowledgeable about philosophy, I wonder... if the actual cosmology is so much based on practicality... if his interpretations are all that accurate. I'd like to feel his qi.

Not trying to be negative. This problem with translating is a well-known one and one that is discussed often in China.

FWIW

Mike Sigman
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