As each text's reading pages state them.
The Chinese is
江希張's own 1919 edition, transcribed character-by-character from the 1935 奉天再版 print; the 字解 glosses are his, verbatim.
Two English renderings are offered, and every line names the one you are reading:
Derek Lin's published translation, shown by default, and
TD, our own (Tong De) preliminary translation of 江希張's Chinese, refined with input from knowledgeable, spiritually wise senior readers of our community toward a version we can stand behind.
Corrections welcome.
Source. 《新註道德經白話解說》, 江希張 (山東歷城) 註, 萬國道德會／關東印書館, 奉天 — 康德二年 (1935) 再版 of the 民國八年 (1919) original. Public domain. 原文 + 字解: transcribed character-by-character from that print; they are not taken from our older machine-converted transcription files, which carry OCR and simplified→traditional conversion errors. This edition differs from the familiar 王弼本 received text at several points, and where 江希張 himself recorded a rival reading his 別本 note is carried as a variant mark. Editorial layers (ours): the line breaks and the ，；？ punctuation — the print sets continuous columns and points with 。 only (plus one 、 in 第九章); and modern Taiwan glyph forms (為 for 爲, 強 for 强, 真 for 眞). English (「TD」): our own (Tong De) preliminary translation of 江希張's Chinese, refined with input from knowledgeable, spiritually wise senior readers of our community toward a version we can stand behind. It is never presented as his own words in English; he wrote Chinese. Second translation (currently the page default): Translation by Derek Lin, from www.Taoism.net — quoted under the permission granted on that work. Credit as source: www.Taoism.net and Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained, published by SkyLight Paths in 2006. His annotations from that book are NOT reproduced here. Note that Derek Lin renders the received text, so where 江希張's edition differs the two diverge for textual reasons, not interpretive ones. Pinyin is not yet included on this text: grounded pinyin requires 多音字 resolution against a phonological apparatus, and a mechanical fallback would be wrong at scale.
A
preliminary translation, grounded in the classical Chinese commentary (郭象 註 · 成玄英 疏 · 經典釋文) and refined in the open with input from knowledgeable, spiritually wise senior readers, toward a version we can stand behind.
Corrections welcome.
Sources (all public domain). Original text: 莊子, kanripo KR5c0126. Commentary: 郭象 註 (d. 312) + 成玄英 疏 (Tang), via 維基文庫 (正統道藏). Variant readings: 陸德明《經典釋文·莊子音義》. Translations: James Legge, The Texts of Taoism (1891) · Herbert Giles, Chuang Tzŭ (1889). “Scholar” and “Plain” are our own preliminary translations, refined with input from knowledgeable, spiritually wise senior readers toward a version we can stand behind.
Every line here is exactly two things: the verified CBETA source text (T2008, 宗寶本), and a verbatim quotation of one existing English translation (Hwa Deh Temple, 2016). Nothing on this page is paraphrased, synthesized, or compared across recensions. That is deliberate — this is a clean-slate rebuild of an earlier pass that had presented rewritten content under unclear attribution, which we withdrew rather than patched. Other editions and translations may be layered in later as separate, clearly-labeled passes.
Sources. Original text: 六祖大師法寶壇經 (CBETA T2008, 宗寶本, CC-BY-NC-SA). English translation: Hwa Deh Temple (2016) — quoted verbatim, not modified or paraphrased; its own copyright page states "not for sale or any commercial purposes" (contact
[email protected]). Quoted here for non-commercial educational reference. Only one translation exists in this version — both toggle positions ("Scholar"/"Plain") currently show the same text; pinyin is not yet included.