My process

Pen and paper

First I got a stack of black and white composition books—each notebook would hold my notes for two chapters, plus there was an extra one where I kept verbal project notes.

Second, I got index cards and put them in a tackle box. Each card would hold one character. On each card, I would write the character’s pinyin transcription at the top. Then I would draw the modern character and the old bronze script characters as well as its sub-components. I’d write each component and characters’ oldest meanings and, in separate boxes, the modern meanings as well as the typical way Dào translators use the word. In a separate spot, I’d list every chapter where I found this character. Finally, I had my working translation, circled. Highlighters and different colored pens helped me keep all these different kinds of information more easily separated on such a small space.

Then I started in. For each chapter, I wrote out the verses in pinyin and in the modern Chinese characters. Then I started a card for each character or, when I got further in and characters began to be repeated, pulled the card I’d already started for that character. I referenced dictionaries and previous Dào translations as I created and kept revising each character’s card. In this way, I could develop and edit translations that grammatically “worked” in every location where I found a given character. With each change, I’d go back to the other notebooks where the character occurred and change its definition there. So all the chapters kept evolving as I went.

I wasn’t concerned with the overall “meaning” of the Dào during this process. I was just creating a source document I could later use to try to understand the text itself. I did it all by hand because I wanted the experience of writing every character and word many, many times.

Data Base

When I was done with that step and ready to assemble a first draft of all 37 chapters in one typed document, then it was time to get on the computer. Because my ultimate goal was to make an app where you, the reader, could use all this information to make your own translation of the Dào, I wanted a special kind of document. I wanted one where you can fine-tune any definition and have it update every place it occurrs in the text.

Knowing that my goal was going to require a data base in some way, I entered each modern character into an Excel spreadsheet along with its pinyin transcription and my definition. Unfortunately I couldn’t figure out a way to make this spreadsheet interface smoothly with a text document that consisted solely of entries from that data base. You can link Excel and Word for things like form letters or envelopes, but making an entire document of linked Excel entries just overwhelms both softwares.

My son-in-law told me about a truly relational data base that lives in the cloud, Airtable, so I copied the spreadsheet into that space. I added a column that assigns a number to each “spot” where a would occurs in the text and then linked it to the specific character that’s found there.

A text document

Finally, I could put all my translations together in the order in which they appear, divided into chapters… in one document. The process up to this point took a year (!) and was worth it. I got my first draft—a source document that I now could use to read what I think Lâozî wrote, process the content, and consider what I think it means to me. And I got the embryo of the document that will turn into an app everyone can use to do the same thing.

Reading the Dào

As you can tell, I assembled my own source document—my first draft—in a sort of machine-like, rote way. (Though I was interacting with each character over and over and like to think that was all being filed away in my unconscious mind to help me later!) I wanted to do it this way to be as objective as possible. Now I can pull back and really read it. I can look at the whole book. I’m able to do some more fine-tuning of definitions and trying to make sense of the text itself at the same time. I’ve added punctuation, capitalization, and indentations as I go to help organize it visually in the way that makes sense to me.

This step is what I’m doing here with you. You’re helping me edit my second draft. Describing characters to you has been helping to improve my translations, as you’ve noticed. I knew it would be transformative for me, but have thus far been shocked by exactly how transformative and how much clearer it makes things when I try to explain them to someone else. And your comments help even more. I’m currently adding one blog post weekly, with occasional bonus ones sprinkled in, and I’m at work daily on various other parts of the overall project. Thanks for joining me in this iteration, and keep the comments coming!

Betsy, 2/16/20