Translation is at the crux of all Neijing studies. Weather we are talking about translating from classical Chinese into modern Chinese or from Classical Chinese into english there are many challenges. Not only translation itself but also the interpretation of concepts foreign in both time and space.

To learn how to practice minimizing our cultural and personal biases in order to hear more clearly the voices of people recorded in writing 2000 or more years ago is not an easy task.

Quite a few people have made very valiant efforts to make translations of the Neijing into english and all have fallen well short of transmitting the beauty, practicality and transendent awe of reading the original text.

A large part of the problem is that the classical Chinese of the Neijing uses a mode of language that is impossible to reproduce. Many characters have multiple meanings, often contradictory and often the full impact of a phrase or a concept makes simultaneous use of all these mulitiple means at the same time.

Any time we reduce a sentence to an English version we lose most if not all of the effect of this networked, fractalated original.

Our solution to this problem is to stop trying to make strict word for word translations, to stop trying to transfer ideas into proper english grammar and to stop caring if it takes real effort to learn to read and appreciate our translations. Instead we will;

• Use quite literal translations that leave much of the sentence structure and grammar as it appears to us. As English speakers this will seem disjointed and weird at first but will be more faithful to the experience of learning to read the Neijing in classical Chinese.
  • So for example the Neijing authors propose a model in which everything important in life is a process and they back this up by using a language in which there is no verb to be. How do we write English sentences that make sense without using the verb to be? How do we transmit Neijing ideas when we are nailing down and solidifying something that in the original is left purposefully fluid?

• Use many terms in their original with the idea that we will develop through out the course a vocabulary of new terms with larger and more subtle meaning than any approximate English equivalent. In this way we hope people following the course will develop a larger and richer vocabulary specific to the discussion of Neijing concepts rather than reducing Neijing concepts to the level of standard English usage.
  • This translational strategy is part of our active research. We are looking forward to developing and refining it as we progress.