In the notes to his translation of the Tao te Ching, Stephen Mitchell relates these words from Po Chu-i. How could he have been such a blabbermouth? For those who are interested in more authenticity as opposed to this Americanized, watered-down stuff, my recommendation is to continue your investigation, and look at the other options available to you.This month, classic lit connoisseur Bernard Norcott-Mahany continues his year-long travel theme with a review of the Tao Te Ching, which he unofficially subtitles “It don’t mean a thing without Tao Te Ching.” I fully expect it will continue to be very, very popular. This book has a lot of momentum and is often recommended. I am not opposed to calling it "inspired by Lao Tzu" or "based on Lao Tzu" but to call it a translation of Lao Tzu is simply false advertising.
Take the above mistakes and imagine them duplicated several times in every chapter, and you start to get the idea how inaccurate this translation is. Between the example about the tree and the journey of a thousand miles, the orignal says "a tower of nine levels starts as accumulated dirt." This line is completely missing, possibly because Mitchell does not understand the line. The author uses a lot of New Age-isms and his personal philosophies to fill out the blanks where he does not understand the original. There's not much meat between the covers. Chapter 60 has this line: "You spoil it with too much poking." Well, this is something added by the author, not a translation, because the orignial says absolutely nothing about spoiling the fish or poking it. Each chapter (verse) in this book has about a dozen errors in the sense of omission of original concepts, additions of author's own ideas, and distortions and twists the original meaning into something that only superficially resembles the original Tao teachings. Some have called this "definitive" - but if you really know Chinese you will instantly see, from any chapter, that it is anything but.
They do praise it lavishly not necessarily due to merit, but due to mutual back-scratching in the academic world - about which I am fully qualified to comment. The scholars who praise this version, like Huston Smith, are themselves not knowledgeable in Chinese, and are not really qualified to evaluate it. The fact that it sells so well underscores the abysmally low level of Chinese knowledge in the U.S. And that's about all the good things I see in it.
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