Tao te Ching

Written by Lao Tzu (Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

ISBN: 0-06-095543-0

*This is not necessarily the definitive English translation; there are many others of equal or better quality. This one is relatively well-established though the translator openly admits that he has "paraphrased, expanded, contracted, interpreted, worked with the text, played with it [...] until it felt genuine to [him]." We will discuss the text itself of course, but we cannot do that without looking at the methods by which Mitchell translated from the original Chinese. At the end of the foreword, he attempts to reassure us by explaining, "If I haven't always translated Lao-tzu's words, my intention has always been to translate his mind." Is this good enough? To what extent can we accept subjectivity in the translation?