A Study of Polysemy and Multi-translation in Tao Te Ching

Only 5000 words in Tao Te Ching have exhausted all the phenomena in the world. A statistic has been made among these 5000 words. Many words are repetitive, which shows that a word or a phase has more than one meaning. It has achieved such a profound and magnificent connotation of Tao Te Ching. A thorough study of polysemy is an important prerequisite for the translation of Tao Te Ching to convey its essence well. Therefore, the article screened the polysemy in Tao Te Ching and found many words and phrases have more than one meaning. The article chooses “shàng”, “xíng”, “shàn” and “qù”, which are polysemous and appear frequently, as research objects. It is of great significance to study the accurate translation of these representative words for the accuracy of the English version of Tao Te Ching. Keywords—Tao Te Ching; polysemy; multi-translation