Dear All,

This question may have been answered long ago with so many threads on this forum; however so far I haven't been able to find a satisfying answer and as a newbie I hope you forgive me should I be asking again Also I'd like to apologize upfront should I have posted this thread in the wrong place and please feel free to move it where it fits most.

I'm very appreciative about this forum, which I became a member of last September when going through a rough patch. Probably times of difficulty signify when most people turn to means like the Yi Ying, Tarot, etc. Now, nearly six month down the line, and life being on the up again, I'm still consulting the Yi regularly and it's helping me tremendously to listen to my true inner voice.

In the beginning I mostly used this site for translations and interpretations and still do use it often. As an English based forum I used the translations given which are Hillary's, Wilhelm/Baynes and Legge. Later on I started to use LiSe's website and downloaded the books from Bradford for look-up when what ever was presented did not make any sense to me. Later I realized that I had a German version of Wilhelm sitting on a bookshelf ... And because unfortunately my knowledge about Chinese is non-existent I started to study the German version more closely as he was one of the first Westerners to make an effort to translate the Yi. I understand that Baynes took the German version and translated it into English, correct? Could it be that her translation is not translated all that well? And that her translations already carry her interpretation of the texts even in the image, judgement and lines and that basic linguistic mistakes were made by choosing the wording she chose at the time of translation? (Btw I'm not German, but studied German linguistics).

As an example I would like to offer hex. 37. In English: The Family, whereby the German translation by Wilhelm is called "Die Sippe". Die Sippe represents a clan, especially at the time Wilhelm translated the Yi.(meaning the entire family in the father's lineage). In 37.2 the English speaks of "she" whereby Wilhelm's sie is referring to "die Sippe...". which is plural and can be easily mistaken for the singular "sie" meaning she. The same for hex. 8 Union/das Zusammenhalten where for instance:

8.1
Hold to him in truth and loyalty;
This is without blame.
Truth, like a full earthen bowl;
Thus in the end
Good fortune comes from without.

Is in German:
8.1
Halte wahr und treu zu ihm: das ist kein Makel.
Wahrheit wie eine volle Tonschüssel:
so kommt schließlich von außen her das Heil.

Ihm is referring to das Zusammenhalten (Union). Now I don't know about the gender of the noun union in English though ...

If I would have to translate 8.1 from German into English it would read:
Stick truthfully and loyal to the union
Truth is like a full earthen bowl
As good fortune is filled by/from the outside in.
(I apologize if this is rather crooked English , as English is also not my mother's tongue)

Maybe I'm looking at this too much from a linguistic point of view and any comment on this would be highly appreciated.

Take good care and looking forward hearing and learning from you!

In 37, the idea of Jia is actually a group of people behind the same door. Could be an extended family or a school of philosophy (Dao Jia is the school of philosophical Daoism). Our association to the nuclear family is more recent, and not the family the Yi is using.

As to pronouns, almost all of them are artifacts of Western translations, but they are rarely even necessary. There is no pronoun at all in 8.1.
Where they do occur, they are usually gender-neutral, like qi, usually possessive, literally 'one's' or their. In only a few places does context suggest a choice, like adorning his beard. But even this might offend some circus folk.

Literal translation of 8.1

All translations have differences. It is not possible to know the exact meaning of the original text.
Unfortunately the Baynes translation is more oriented towards Confucian terminology than the original Wilhelm translation.
Following the Zhouyi Zhezhong and traditional usage (fu means capture or captive according to another interpretation), in my view the first line of the hexagram 8 says:

you fu: (have, there is) (truth, sincere)
bi zhi: (hold, union, ally with) (personal pronoun)
wu jiu: no (blame, mistake, not favorable)
you fu: (have, there is) (truth, sincere)
jing fou: (full, overfill) (pot)
zhong lai: (end, complete) (come, return)
you tuo: (have, there is) (another, other)
ji: good fortune, auspicious

8.1
say, a rite of pasage or an innitiation story.

孚 can also mean 俘 booty / prisoner / slave, maybe interchangeable:
If there is a booty, catch it.
If there is a booty, fill your pot.
After finding a booty will become another.

To get booty is one of the main concerns of soldiers, must be said that women are often among taken booty, words for prisoners also can mean slave that anciently were mainly women.

Paraphrasing Simone Weil, all enemies are seen, if men as corpses, if women as slaves.

孚 maybe can also be read as WOMEN, mixing senses, RELIABLE WOMEN, but that's another story.



Charly

bradford said:

... As to pronouns, almost all of them are artifacts of Western translations, but they are rarely even necessary. There is no pronoun at all in 8.1.
Where they do occur, they are usually gender-neutral, like qi, usually possessive, literally 'one's' or their. In only a few places does context suggest a choice, like adorning his beard. But even this might offend some circus folk.

Click to expand...

Hi, Brad:

Maybe not in ancient China, but even women can be adorned by beards:

Click to expand...

All the best,


Charly

A translation of a translation, both by translators whose native tongue was not Chinese, can't be meticulously accurate. The trouble is, the more accurately the Yi is translated the more obscure is seems. My experience has been that the Yi will communicate with you no matter what the translation, if you give it a chance. Our usual mistake is trying to parse each word and sentence rather than grasping the overall intent of the answer, recognizing the gold and discarding the rest. In the end, using the Yi usefully depends much more on the intuition of the reader than the accuracy of the translation. That said, in addition to the English translations you're already using get John Minford's recent book for study if not necessarily for divination.

Charly and Brad, It is a fact that certain crones grow their own beards. The existence of tweezers and waxings perhaps has limited awareness of this fact.

fyreflye said:

A translation of a translation, both by translators whose native tongue was not Chinese, can't be meticulously accurate. The trouble is, the more accurately the Yi is translated the more obscure is seems. My experience has been that the Yi will communicate with you no matter what the translation, if you give it a chance. Our usual mistake is trying to parse each word and sentence rather than grasping the overall intent of the answer, recognizing the gold and discarding the rest. In the end, using the Yi usefully depends much more on the intuition of the reader than the accuracy of the translation. That said, in addition to the English translations you're already using get John Minford's recent book for study if not necessarily for divination.

Click to expand...

This is a gutsy thing to say in this neighborhood, and I too have found your meaning and intent to be quite accurate. Function has always been my primary interest, and I think a person either gets it very early on or they never will.

charly said:

Hi, Brad:

Maybe not in ancient China, but even women can be adorned by beards:

Charly

Click to expand...

Look more closely, Charly. That's what I meant by circus folk.

bradford said:

Look more closely, Charly. That's what I meant by circus folk.

Click to expand...

Hi, Brad:

If you mean that pharaohs or kings are but circus folks, of course, I agree.

All the best,

Charly

jumpingmouse said:

Charly and Brad, It is a fact that certain crones grow their own beards. The existence of tweezers and waxings perhaps has limited awareness of this fact.

Click to expand...

Hi, JM:
I was said that the CRONE is one of the three phenomenal appearances of the GODDESS which are the VIRGIN OF LOVE, the MOTHER OF NURTURING and the CRONE OF DEATH. Speaking of one of them we think of the three at the same time. While the GODDESS can be seen as spiritual, each appearance is a WOMAN OF FLESH AND BONE, and, of course, HAIR.

Must be said that the crone's BEARD may be an euphemism for another sort of hair and that every Goddess, be Virgin, Mother or Crone is always a grown woman ... but that's another story.

Yours,

Charly
___________________________________
(1) About BEARD etymology:
Ch.