To call Le Guin’s version of the Tao Te Ching a translation is misleading—she knew little Chinese. Le Guin leaned heavily on existing translations, alongside her intuition for Taoist philosophy.

From the her postscript:

> This is a rendition, not a translation. I do not know any Chinese. I could approach the text at all only because Paul Carus, in his 1898 translation of the Tao Te Ching, printed the Chinese text with each character followed by a transliteration and a translation. My gratitude to him is unending.

For the interested, the original paperback contains diligent notes about her sources and word choices.

I also reference Le Guin's rendition a bunch here: https://superbowl.substack.com/p/taoism-minus-the-nonsense