Here are three different translations of the Keichu's Wheel from the Mumonkan, from Reps, then Blythe, then Wonderwheel:
'Keichu, the first wheel-maker of China, made two wheels of fifty spokes each. Now, suppose you removed the nave uniting the spokes. What would become of the wheel? And had Keichu done this, could he be called the master wheel-maker? '
'Gettan said to a monk, “Keichu made a hundred carts. If we took off the wheels and removed the axle, what would then be obvious?”'
'Venerable Yuean asked the monks, "Zizhong made a cart with one hundred spokes. Twist to remove the two hubs and discard them, then remove the spokes. What limit does this job make clear?'
Some wildly different translation decisions throughout. In particular, the final question in each of the three questions is substantially different from the question asked in the other two.
What do you do when you encounter situations like this?
In my Christian days I liked getting multiple translations and kind of triangulating, or at least, keeping in mind the uncertainties invited by the comparison.
Here it's not just "uncertainty" but rather, I literally have no idea sometimes how these could all be translations of a single text. (They are, right? Or are there multiple manuscripts involved here too?) So my best approach is sometimes seemingly just to approach each as its own koan and see where that goes.
What are your thoughts?
Submitted January 07, 2020 at 06:30PM by Porn_Steal https://ift.tt/2FteFiq
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