Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
This raises the question, btw, if the Yi somehow takes the translations that we probably use into account, even if these translations are inaccurate.
I mean, in this case, is it part of the intended message of what speaks through the Yi that the same word appears twice in often used translations (grandmother in Legge, ancestress in WB), although the words are not the same in the original?
Then what if a translation is not just inaccurate, but wrong?
Hmm, I think this opens a big can of off topic worms.
sparhawk said:Not so with the Yi: 64 hexagrams, 8 trigrams and all based on Yin and Yang... I would say that in interpreting the Yi, this fixed symbology is equally important to the attached text. These textless symbols should be the first thing that resonate in our psyche. L
lindsay said:If one translation is as good as another for the purposes of divination, if all allow access to the Yi - then how do we decide which one to use?
lindsay said:I believe the spirit of a person comes through in every mode of expression, including their writing. Perhaps the cues are unconscious, but readers can often pick up on the spirit of an author by reading his work, however impersonal or dryly expository it may be. Richard Wilhelm, by all accounts, was a burning seeker and a sincere mystic - a person who saw the Yi as a life-altering gift - just the sort of person I would trust to tell me something important about a subject like divination. Other authors are less trustworthy, and their works show signs of lack of conviction and superficial understanding.
bruce_g said:There’s a dialogue that develops when you stick to a particular translation or translations. I still use Wilhelm, LiSe’s mostly, and use Brad’s to center the beam, so to speak. If I can’t make sense of a reading using those three, my head’s in the wrong place to begin with.
lindsay said:But why do I trust X? That is the question I would like to be able to answer.
ewald said:I don't think the Yi will simply give you what you need to know, regardless of the translation. To illustrate the value of a good translation, I'd like to present the following about 34.5.
Wilhelm's rendering is:Loses the goat with ease.Bradford has:
No remorse.
Losing the goat in the exchangeSuppose you ask: "Will I gain what I want when I do this?" If you depend on Wilhelm's text, the answer is yes (you let go of a stubborn attitude), if you take Bradford's text, the answer is no (by doing it, you'll actually lose what you want in the process).
No regrets
To get an indication of the actual meaning of 34.5, it is good to look at some actual situations for people who received it, on this forum.
Losing a relationship after sending a letter (this person actually felt confident about sending the letter after receiving 34.5)
Losing someone's closeness after declaring love
A boss taking everything the wrong way
Losing the contact again after talking with a previous heart-breaker
Bradford's rendering is in my view correct, and Wilhelm's is not. Relying on Wilhelm's version actually "puts one on the wrong leg," as we say in the Netherlands, it can make one do the wrong thing, as happened to the person in the first example.
So it does make a difference what translation you use. For most people it is pretty hard to find out what translations are accurate enough, though. You can go by authority and inner consistency of the text. The latter is the best indicator, in my view. It's one of my main points of focus while translating.
Indeed, I just downloaded his latest version, and he now has the same as Wilhelm. It's an older version of his I used.bruce_g said:The Bradford's 34.5 I have reads:
Losing the goat with ease
No regrets
In both cases one relinquishes obstinacy, without regret.
ewald said:So it does make a difference what translation you use. For most people it is pretty hard to find out what translations are accurate enough, though. You can go by authority and inner consistency of the text. The latter is the best indicator, in my view. It's one of my main points of focus while translating.
Why would you have to discard everything? Lack of accuracy doesn't make a text completely useless when you don't have any better, or does it?sparhawk said:If I take your premise literally, I must discard over 30 years of interpretations because they were based on a flawed translation, [...]
ewald said:Why would you have to discard everything? Lack of accuracy doesn't make a text completely useless when you don't have any better, or does it?
ewald said:So, I'm not saying that Wilhelm's is a useless text, I just think that a more useful text is possible.
Absolutely. That however doesn't stop me from looking for ways to optimize my translation that I believe have some kind of universal significance, like for instance checking with readings on this forum like I did earlier in this thread.sparhawk said:The question is that, what's qualified to be a better option for you, may not necessarily be so for the next one over. Wouldn't you agree?
ewald said:Absolutely. That however doesn't stop me from looking for ways to optimize my translation that I believe have some kind of universal significance, like for instance checking with readings on this forum like I did earlier in this thread.
martin said:Bob is of Welsh descent (which explains the long family name) and he lives on an - apart from himself, 3 monkeys and a few million ants - uninhabitated island in the Pacific.
Today Bob has finally enough of eating bananas and coconuts all the time and he would like to know if and where he can catch some fish. West coast, south coast, east maybe?
So he decides to ask the I Ching ...
However, the only 'I Ching' he has is this very bad 1842 translation by a certain Dr Underwilhelm, God have mercy on his confused soul.
lindsay said:The best version of the Yi is the one that makes communication with the spirit as clear and easy as possible, and offers the spirit the most bandwidth to communicate back to us.
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).