1defaults
A.C. Graham or Burton Watson? I have samples of both as featured in Classical Chinese Literature, and I can't come to a conclusion of which to go for. Watson's text flows easily, but Graham's terseness feels like faithfulness to the characteristics of classical Chinese expression. Then again one Amazon review (here) has a side-by-side comparison of the two that is very unflattering to Graham.
2Fogies
Seems no one wants to answer your question. It’s actually a bit of a tricky one, since there is no good translation of Juangzi, so which you prefer is a subjective judgment. The text is a very difficult one and there has never been a sinologist capable of adequately rendering it into English. (Most Chinese readers can’t make much connected sense of it, either. It is valued in the original for its striking images, piercing aphorisms and lively anecdotes.)
Problem 1: it’s not an early text, it’s a late one. Parts were most likely written as late as the Qin dynasty, after the unfication under the founding emperor. And much of its focus is as polemic against philosophic schools that preceded it, and takes the form of satire and parody. Nobody can understand that without a thorough grounding in pre-Qin Chinese philosophy.
Problem 2: the text is very corrupt. You’ve probably seen photos of the archaeologically retrieved bamboo slips that early texts were written on. They were bound with thongs, and when the thongs deteriorated, had to be re-assembled and sometimes were put back out of order. In this text, that jumbling and garbling were much worse than in almost any of the others.
Graham has the great merit of having sorted out which strips go with which (it took him decades) and giving us something pretty close to the early text. His defects are that he translates character by character and tries to use a consistent English word for each character. That makes clunky reading and isn’t really the most accurate kind of translation, but he’s aiming at students of Chinese much more than at general readers and doing it that way serves his pedagogic purpose.
Watson’s translation reads much more smoothly and pleasantly. His defect is that he’s way, way over his head. Like previous translators (eg Giles, Ware) he takes the text as a coherent whole and allows himself unacceptable leeway in translating. If you can get a copy of the textual notes he had to issue as a separate volume, you’d see the extent of the difficulties Graham faced squarely and Watson just ducked.
Edtied for tpying erores
Problem 1: it’s not an early text, it’s a late one. Parts were most likely written as late as the Qin dynasty, after the unfication under the founding emperor. And much of its focus is as polemic against philosophic schools that preceded it, and takes the form of satire and parody. Nobody can understand that without a thorough grounding in pre-Qin Chinese philosophy.
Problem 2: the text is very corrupt. You’ve probably seen photos of the archaeologically retrieved bamboo slips that early texts were written on. They were bound with thongs, and when the thongs deteriorated, had to be re-assembled and sometimes were put back out of order. In this text, that jumbling and garbling were much worse than in almost any of the others.
Graham has the great merit of having sorted out which strips go with which (it took him decades) and giving us something pretty close to the early text. His defects are that he translates character by character and tries to use a consistent English word for each character. That makes clunky reading and isn’t really the most accurate kind of translation, but he’s aiming at students of Chinese much more than at general readers and doing it that way serves his pedagogic purpose.
Watson’s translation reads much more smoothly and pleasantly. His defect is that he’s way, way over his head. Like previous translators (eg Giles, Ware) he takes the text as a coherent whole and allows himself unacceptable leeway in translating. If you can get a copy of the textual notes he had to issue as a separate volume, you’d see the extent of the difficulties Graham faced squarely and Watson just ducked.
Edtied for tpying erores
4Christopher_Tricker
Allow me to recommend the new translation (2022) by Christopher Tricker (that's me).
You can check it out at: http://thecicadaandthebird.com
This new translation stands on the shoulders of Graham's. It stands out from the existing translation in the following ways:
Whereas other translations mix Chuang Tzu's writing up with other people's comments and stories, this new translation removes all that clutter and presents you with Chuang Tzu's long-lost book.
Whereas other translations convert Chuang Tzu's terse poetic style into rambling prose, this new translation uses as few words as possible and crafts them into tightly-constructed lines and paragraphs that capture Chuang Tzu's clarity, playfulness, and humour.
It also has a running commentary.
You can check it out at: http://thecicadaandthebird.com
This new translation stands on the shoulders of Graham's. It stands out from the existing translation in the following ways:
Whereas other translations mix Chuang Tzu's writing up with other people's comments and stories, this new translation removes all that clutter and presents you with Chuang Tzu's long-lost book.
Whereas other translations convert Chuang Tzu's terse poetic style into rambling prose, this new translation uses as few words as possible and crafts them into tightly-constructed lines and paragraphs that capture Chuang Tzu's clarity, playfulness, and humour.
It also has a running commentary.
