Translators and Translations

The Dao De Jing, The Tao Te Ching and the Tao Teh King are the same book, and Lao Zi is Lao Tzu and Lao Tsu. Chinese is written in characters with each one representing a word, and has no alphabet. There have been several different attempts at translating Chinese Pronunciation into Roman letters (known as romanization). Frater Freighter uses the Pinyin System (e.g. Dao De Jing, Beijing), which has been the official Chinese method since 1950, because although it has failings it is more accurate, and unlike the Wade-Giles system (e.g. Tao Te Ching, Pei Ching), you don't have to pay attention to apostrophes (e.g. Ching is pronounced 'Jing', but Ch'ing is pronounced 'Ching'). For example, Dao De Jing sounds like 'Dow Duh Jing' and has no 't' in it at all, and Yi Jing is closer to the actual 'E Jing' than I Ching. Thus, although we now say Beijing instead of Peking, the Chinese have always said Beijing, and there are those who beleive that Mr. Wade and Mr. Giles were severley stoned when they thought their system up.

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