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bourrique

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I am by profession a translator, of French not of Chinese. I am particularly aware that a translator filters a text - it's unavoidable - your assumptions and prejudices, beliefs, experience and culture all get in the way. You don't even realise you're doing it, unless you have attuned yourself, and even then... A translator is like a person who goes into a house and decides to paint it a different colour, oh and change the furniture, and maybe add an extension. And we get away with it more often than not because who is going to challenge us? We like to believe we are opening doors and switching on the lights. Oh, we aspire to be as transparent as a pane of glass, and not distort the light in any way. But do we succeed?
I remember as part of my thesis investigating the translations of Othello into French. It turned out, to my great surprise, that there are thousands of them at the Bibliothèque nationale alone, and who knows how many more that were never submitted to the BN. We don't realise how lucky we are to be able to read the original. Ploughing through a translation invariably tells you more about the translator than the original text.
So - if you're still reading - why am I telling you all this? Well because I'm wrestling with the various translations of H30. Over the years, I have acquired quite a few translations of the I Ching, and now there are translations online too. My most recent acquisition is a translation into French by Arlette de Beaucorps and Dominique Bonpaix after a previous translation by C.J-D Javary. I have grown to like its terseness greatly. Here is their translation of H30, rendered into English for an audience of connoisseurs i.e. no Wilhelmised text.

BIRDCATCHER'S NET or LIGHT
ANCIENT CHARACTERS
At top left, a lid placed on top of a sieve or net. On the right, a bird, whose wings we can see. Idea of being pinned down, of adherence, of consistency
GENERAL MEANING OF THE HEXAGRAM
Risk of being dazzled through the loss of the notion of reality

JUDGEMENT
BIRDCATCHER'S NET
tenacity is profitable
Favourable
TAME the cow opening
Risk of being dazzled. Remain determined for the duration by keeping your feet on the ground. Situation full of promise. Only concrete matters are to be developed with care.
GREAT IMAGE
LIGHT ACTING TWICE
BIRDCATCHER'S NET
THUS THE GREAT PERSON
BY CONNECTING WITH THIS LIGHT
illuminates the four regions​

ADVICE: Becoming aware of the situation without fooling yourself will enable you to radiate and clarify the things around you.

NUCLEAR: Hexagram 28, GREAT EXCESS.
Meaning: at the heart of Birdcatcher's Net is a dynamic that causes a loss of control, an excess.

OPPOSITE: Hexagram 29, Training to Get Through The Ravines
"Birdcatcher's Net" is not a situation where one has to go beyond what one is capable of.
____________
I won't translate the lines.

This was the first translation I read after my question which was "Will this Trojan Horse work?" (30.1.4 52) I wanted to set a kind of trap for someone, so a birdcatcher's net resonated immediately. But the other translations I have, read very differently; Wilhelm, Lynn, Berkers, Heyboer etc. It's as if they are translating different texts. Maybe they are. It's perplexing.
I suppose I am just regretting that I can't read the original Chinese. Maybe I'll do that when I can afford to retire.:bows:
 

rabiticide

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I have found that having two translations helps one triangulate the meaning of the original better. Then you can kinda tilt your head and see through the filters. Your rendering reminds me of Karcher - a bare bones version that requires a bit more thought to get the drift.

How many French versions are there compared to English? Do you find it helpful to have French and English side by side?
 

heylise

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I think the translation by Ritsema and Karcher would be very interesting for you. It is not without faults, but it gives many meanings for each character.

And Wenlin, a program in which you can easily see the translations of the characters. They also give translations for the parts of which it consists, which is very helpful. The Yi is so old, that many characters have different meanings than they have in modern Chinese. I think it already has a Chinese Yi, if not, then I can send one, or you can find it on the website of Steve Marshall.

Finally: Bradfords translation. Like Ritsema but more reliable.

When you know the basic image of a character, you can understand more or less the meaning in a specific sentence, even when you don't know the "right" translation. Often there is no "right" one, and what you intuitively understand, is anyway more important than the literal translation.
 

bourrique

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Thanks very much for the links, Lise, particularly Wenlin which I had never heard of. When I have more time I will devote an entire day to it but for now, the I Ching is being a hard taskmaster and telling me to go SouthWest and stay focussed on the work in hand.

Rabiticide
There are not many translations into French, that's why when I came across this in Paris's Chinatown I just had to have it. The Wilhelm translation was rendered into French but only via Baynes!! It has a distinctive, hi-viz yellow cover and was called the Book of Kathmandu apparently because loads of French tourists would turn up in Kathmandu with their copy.
I call the I Ching my spiritual satnav. Yes, I use several translations every time - up to 8! This gives more than triangulation, more a matrix of consonance (and disonance:)) To cope with all that information, I use Microsoft's OneNote programme as my workbook. It is great as it has an indexing feature which pulls up previous occurences of a Hexagram. This is very useful. I can copy and paste and reorganise and annotate so easily. It has built in OCR so I can scan text easily from paper-only sources and from Ewald's 'secured' ebook. I end up with a collage, a kind of mood board.
 
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heylise

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OneNote has built in OCR!?! Gonna find out how, I need that! The OCR I had is too old for this computer, so I was searching for a solution.

Hilary and Justin Farrell are hard at work to make his software, "Journal", perfect. Even better than it is already. It organizes all your readings in a wonderful way, and has a search-button with lots of options in it. It is what I use for readings, and can be found here:
https://sites.google.com/site/ichingsoftware/
 

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