Why are there so many translations of Laozi in Europe? Why should it be so much more popular than the Analects of Confucius? In the opinion of Wolfgang Schwabe, a student from Germany, every society and culture has a moral beacon that plays a role corresponding to that of Confucianism in Chinese society. There is already enough pressure in life as it is, explains Schwabe, and Laozi is popular because it does not address the subject of morality directly. Schwabe recounts an anecdote which aptly illustrates just how familiar the German people are with Laozi. He did his Master's thesis on the Huangdi Bo Shu, a book unearthed several years ago by archeologists in China. Near the end of his thesis, he described the dao as the principle which guides how nature works, but a German friend read this and disagreed, saying, "The dao is much more than that. It's more mysterious, more profound, more subtle."
It has been said that Laozi may be relatively popular abroad because it is shorter than the other Chinese classics, and therefore easier to translate. To this, however, Schwabe responds, "Then why are there so few translations of The Great Learning and The Doctrine of the Mean? Those Confucian classics are even shorter than Laozi." However, Schwabe does not read Laozi in translation because a lot of translations copy from each other and badly miss the meaning of the original. "Laozi itself is actually very straightforward. Laozi felt that intuitive, person-to-person communication is more effective than verbal communication. When a translation of Laozi misses the meaning of the Chinese original, a tiny miss makes a huge difference. Laozi could have foretold that, no doubt.
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Wolfgang Schwabe
