The Dao of Translation An East-West Dialogue [Hardcover]

The Dao of Translationsets up an East-West dialogue on the nature of language and translation, and specifically on the unknown forces that shape the act of translation. To that end it mobilizes two radically different readings of the Daodejing(formerly romanized as the Tao Te Ching): the traditional mystical reading according to which the Dao is a mysterious force that cannot be known, and a more recent reading put forward by Sinologists Roger T. Ames and David L. Hall, to the effect that the Dao is simply the way things happen. Key to Ames and Halls reading is that what makes the Dao seem both powerful and mysterious is that it channels habitinto actionor what the author calls social ecologies, or icoses. The author puts Daoism (and ancient Confucianism) into dialogue with nineteenth-century Western theorists of the sign, Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure (and their followers), in order to develop an icotic understanding of the tensions between habit and surprise in the activity of translating.

The Dao of Translationwill interest linguists and translation scholars. This book will also engage researchers of ancient Chinese philosophy and provide Western scholars with a thought-provoking cross-examination of Eastern and Western perspectives.

1. Laozis Unspeakable Dao  2. The Dao of Abduction: Hartama-Heinonen on Peirce on Translation 2.1 Peirce and his Followers among Semiotic Translation Scholars 2.2 Hartama-Heinonen vs. Robinson 2.3 Exclusive Abduction 2.3.1 Translation as !2wuwei 2.3.2 +Reasoning 2.3.3 Foreclosing on Secondness and Thirdness 2.4 Guessing as Divining: Peirce on the Mystery  3. The Dao of Empathy: Mengzis Social Ecologies of Feeling 3.1 On Reading witlƒ°