Publications
Publication details [#9513]
Eihmanis, Kaspars. 2002. Clash of interpretations: the Latvian translation of Lao Tzu's Tao-Te Ching. In Ivbulis, Viktors, ed. Language, literature and translation manipulations. Special issue of Humanities and Social Sciences. Latvia 1 (34): 104–112.
Publication type
Article in Special issue
Publication language
English
Keywords
Source language
Target language
Person as a subject
Title as subject
Edition info
Special Issue.
Abstract
The problem of genuine and correct understanding of the Chinese philosophical texts has always been a major difficulty for western scholars. Nevertheless serious research has been done to translate these texts into western languages. Latvia saw its first translation of the Chinese philosophical text in 1986: the translation of the Tao-Te Ching was produced consulting various translations of the text in German, Russian, English and French and ignored the original text in Classical Chinese. This article aims at showing how the original text of the Tao-Te Ching, and the main concepts expressed by it, are corrupted using unchecked rendering of Chinese words in non-Latvian translation and philosophical categories that belong to different tradition. Only a few concepts which appear in the first chapters of the Tao-Te Ching are used in the analyses compared to a few English translations of the text.
Source : Based on abstract in book