"Free Translation/ Lao Tzu" (Man Arai): Essay
Man Arai, he accurately translated the lyrics of Mary Frye, the original poem of "A Thousand Winds", composed and made a big hit in Japan. He is a famous writer in Japan.
He had a weak constitution since childhood, and as a reading, he was familiar with "The Analects" (Confucius's sayings and deeds) and "Lao Tzu", but as he got older, "Lao Tzu" became more comfortable. That's right. Therefore, he wrote this book, "Free Translation /Lao Tzu" (Asahi newspaper, 2007).
In this book, Mr. Arai cut out unnecessary parts of "Lao Tzu" and reconstructed all 81 chapters (9*9) into 18 chapters (2*9). It's a short summary over and over, and you'll finish reading it in 30 minutes. Well, if you cut that much useless (!!) part, it will be that amount. (To put it bluntly, this is a presumptuous book that uses Lao Tzu as a soup stock.)
After reading it, I thought, "It's too clean." When Lao Tzu's words are translated into Japanese as they are, it is an accurate translation, but by “omitting”, the “diversity” of Lao Tzu is hidden, and Mr. Arai says, “I want it to be like this.”Lao Tzu image is amplified as he wants. Lao Tzu is not "clean".
Also, I was concerned that the expression “Boku”, which appears many times throughout Lao Tzu's writing, only appeared once, and that it was treated as unimportant.
Then, I found a statement in Arai's translation that should be clearly wrong. This is the expression on page 28, “Water conforms to the shape of the container” which is translated by Arai as meaning “water that has the flexibility to take any shape.”
Although this is very likely, it is an expression that does not appear in Lao Tzu, and it is an expression that originated mainly in Confucianism, and was included in the Jitsugo-sutra, which was used as a textbook for self-cultivation in Japan for a long time. It's a thing. This word means "If you make a bad person a friend, you become bad too." They have completely different origins and opposite meanings. To write something that is not in the text of “Lao Tzu” as if he said it would be ignorant and would be blasphemy to Lao Tzu.
Words of the Day: In general, this book is biased, and I don't think it's necessary to read it, but an anthology containing words that Lao Tzu would never say, such as “If you love someone deeply, you will gain strength.” I think that both is harmful.
