| As a classic of the Taoists, The Tao Te Ching (The Book of Tao and Teh) exerts a significant influence both home and abroad. The number of its English versions is over 100. But up to now, much of the research on The Tao Te Ching is concerned with the strategies or techniques that translators adopted during translation while the research on the diversity of the English versions of The Tao Te Ching has often been neglected.Drawing on hermeneutics, this essay aims to explore the cause of the diversity through the analysis of four versions of The Tao Te Ching. This essay shows that the interpreter's "understanding" and "interpreting" are equivalent to the translator's "understanding" and "translating". Different understandings have led to different translations. In interpretation, the translators choose various translation methods according to their own translation ideas, embodying the translator's subjectivity. In addition, historical interpretation causes the source text's uncertainty which makes the translation of The Tao Te Ching a difficult job. Effective history causing the openness of the source text is also one reason of the diversity of The Tao Te Ching, because relevant archeological findings will cause the existent versions to be revised and updated. |
