Talk:Tao Te Ching

Sources for future article expansion

• Zhang Can; et al. (10 August 2022), "Challenge and Revolution: An Analysis of Stanislas Julien's Translation of the Daodejing", Religions, vol. 13, doi:10.3390/rel13080724{{citation}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link).

This is a pretty thorough treatment of the TTC's treatment in French, which has been influential on its reception in English and across Europe. In particular, it's obviously hilariously misguided but nonetheless important and worth mentioning that the Jesuits and other Christian sinologists got reaaaaaaaaaally hung up—as in for centuries—on a passage that talks about 1→2→3 and the myriad things coming from the three + another with the three characters 夷希微 (Yíxīwēi) taken to be a transcription of the tetragrammaton YHWH. We shouldn't gloss it as anything remotely accurate, but it's still worth mentioning in the article, given its influence on the Jesuit & al.'s handling of the classic, bumping it up several notches in importance vs the Chinese opinion at the time, which thought it was fine and all but it wasn't on the test so... maybe something to read in retirement. — LlywelynII 04:48, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Content

The content of the book (manuscript) must be described in the article. Jestmoon(talk) 18:12, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Use of Wade-Giles in Title

I think the article should use the pinyin romanization of 'Dao De Jing,' and it should list the Wade-Giles romanization of 'Tao Te Ching' as secondary. There are some book titles that arguably have entered the English lexicon with the Wade-Giles (Sun Tzu), but I don't think this applies to the Dao De Jing. Mcmaho17 (talk) 16:02, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

My feeling is that the Wade-Giles transscription is still dominant for this book title, as well as for Sun Tzu. As a weak support, amazon.com has over 3000 hits on "tao te ching" (including the quotes), 121 on "dao de jing", and 41 on "daodejing". Nø (talk) 16:52, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I believe that the Wade-Giles "Tao Te Ching" is more widely used in English than pinyin "Dao De Jing". Since the Tao Te Ching entered the English-speaking consciousness before pinyin, I believe that puts it in a similar position to Sun Tzu’s Art of War where the Wade-Giles is more well known.

As examples, The New York Times has 82 hits for "Tao Te Ching" and 7 hits for "Dao De Jing"; The Atlantic has 7 for "Tao Te Ching" and 0 for "Dao De Jing". Both of these papers have examples of "Tao Te Ching" being used in the last three years, so it’s being used currently. Lathe Foundation (talk) 14:30, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

The preferred version of the Chinese government and the most accurate as far as English pronunciation is the pinyin version. To cling to the Wade-Giles because it is traditionally inaccurate and contrary to modern translation seems nonsensical. Dao De Jing, please, will make this entry closer to consistent with all other articles in the preferred pinyin as well as one more step away from the ‘traditional’ mispronunciation of common terms such as Gong Fu (sic Kung Fu), Yin Yang, with Yang with the ‘a’ pronounced as the ‘a’ in Yay rather than the ‘ou’ in Young, etc. Jhodge3rd (talk) 21:08, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't work off the "preferred version of the Chinese government"—it works off what most reliable modern sources use. You'll see in these ngrams, that "Dao De Jing" is no where near overtaking the "Tao Te Ching" in usage. If this is "nonsensical" to you, then that's an unfortunate reality. Aza24 (talk) 21:24, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

That is true (and the thing I'm about to link supports the current title), but look what happens when you add the term "Daodejing" and turn off case sensitivity.... Folly Mox (talk) 22:00, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Moreover! If we're concerned about recognizability, surely the letters used matter a bit more than spacing, if there are multiple variants? Remsense诉 22:04, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Far be it from me to reopen this can of worms unless it actually convinces people because I myself do not care, but were people really addressing this in the latest RM? Remsense诉 22:09, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Actually the smoothing is definitely misleading on that one—remember how crypto was really annoying? Remsense诉 22:21, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Interesting, yes that's more convincing. My comment was more a refutation of Jhodge's rationale than a refutation of the proposal itself (which I suppose is not entirely productive of me) Aza24 (talk) 23:29, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

Consensus is the active process of working things out, not getting it completely right the first time. Remsense诉 23:58, 4 August 2024 (UTC)

I think my pragmatic view is that

1. This move is going to be happening at some point in the next few months or years, let's not kid ourselves, and
2. When it happens, it should be when we can move both Taoism, Tao (et al.), and this article together, because I think having them on different tracks would be deeply annoying to editors and readers and a bit myopically focused on specific figures. The text and its movement are ultimately joined at the hip, one would have to admit.

Remsense诉 00:02, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Let me add articles like Tai chi (that's about tàijíquán) and I Ching (Yijing) that might be moved at the same time - and note that Taiji (philosophy) (about the concept tàijí, i.e., more or less, yin and yang) and Taijitu (the familiar symbol) use pinyin (but without tone marks). I believe academic sources mostly use pinyin for all of these, but English-language sources intended for general consumption (newspapers, publications of English translations the books in question, etc.) use Wade-Giles, and I'm inclined to think it will take longer than suggested in user:Remsense's item 1. above. Nø (talk) 09:42, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

I think those are probably headed that way too, even if it's not a visible necessity due to the actual apparent lexical overlap. Remsense诉 10:08, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

Accounting for the "case insensitivity and compositions cannot be mixed" message from ngrams from the linktext Moreover! above, this minor correction, which maintains the overall shape very closely.

The I Ching alone out of the articles mentioned just above I would dispute, on the basis that "Yijing" probably isn't the common name either, given its (delta tone marks) pinyin homophony to a number of common terms, most saliently 已經 (my Chinese keyboard's predictive text offers 17 suggestions for the input "yijing").

I suspect without looking that The Classic of Changes might be the more common English term now. Folly Mox (talk) 10:09, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

And that one will probably not be ngrammable due to false positives. Folly Mox (talk) 10:10, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

source structure

Why is this not using a standardized source format, like SFN? This format is more difficult to work with.FourLights (talk) 09:39, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

Some of the citations are in {{sfnp}}, but I'd guess that the reason is that the article predates {{sfn}} (in fact, it predates citations on Wikipedia entirely) and no one has bothered to convert it yet. Folly Mox (talk) 10:28, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

The introduction to SNFP just says its like SFN but uses paranthesis for the year. I don't know about it, I was directed towards using SFN. Do we prefer SFNP here? Even if I don't get it perfect, would it sound good to convert the article to one or the other?FourLights (talk) 12:49, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

A lot of them say harvp but don't all have page numbers. If people could agree to use a standardized format I could look for the page numbers. It's relevant for long term work to sort out the daodejing more.FourLights (talk) 13:04, 1 August 2024 (UTC)

I don't see any problem with standardizing sfnp here. Remsense诉 22:18, 4 August 2024 (UTC)