Author(s)

Huizhou Pu ¹, Wanting Sun ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ School of Foreign Languages, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

Corresponding Author

Huizhou Pu

ABSTRACT

The Tao Te Ching, written by Laozi, is regarded as the first philosophical work in Chinese history to have a complete system. It has had a significant influence on the development of Chinese political thought and has also garnered widespread attention in the Western academic community. This article focuses on the semantic equivalence in the English translation context of the Tao Te Ching, aiming to explore its important insights and reference value for the development of our modern human society. The article provides a brief overview of the numerous versions and interpretations of the English translations of the Tao Te Ching. It selects representative translations from three main periods of English translation of the Tao Te Ching and combines relevant theories. Through analyzing the uniqueness of the Tao Te Ching text and its context, the article summarizes the reasons for the diversity of semantic interpretations in its English translations. The goal is to provide new perspectives and ideas for the translation, appreciation, and research of Chinese classical texts.

KEYWORDS

Tao Te Ching; Chinese classics English translation; Context; Semantic diversity

CITE THIS PAPER

Huizhou Pu, Wanting Sun, Semantic Analysis in the Context of Translation of Classics—Taking Tao Te Ching as an Example. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2025) Vol. 8: 8-16. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2025.080102.

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