Thomas Zhang

Tao Te Jing in Plain English Thomas Zhang

TheTao Te Ching is one of the more popularly translatedtexts of all historical Chinese writings. Despite the many efforts that havegone into studying and translating Lao Tzu's works, it is still remains verydifficult to understand, even to native readers. Therefore, only those whofully comprehend the text can translate it properly. This version opts to giveas accurate of a translation in as plain of English as possible. Since our goalis to bring a comprehendible Tao Te Ching to our readers,we decided against conforming to any sort of poetic forms. Although we used thesame original text as some of the other translators, there are some notabledifferences in our interpretations, such as in Chapters One and Twenty. Inorder to better allow our readers to understand the text, this translation alsocompares Lao Tzu's ideas with other great thinkers, such as Einstein andNapoleon.