Customer Reviews

The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine: A New Translation of the Neijing Suwen with Commentary

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While this book is sometimes criticised for its lack of scholarly style, it is important to realize that the writer is approaching a 2,500 year old work, the seminal theoretical treatise of Chinese medicine, from the point of view of a clinician. It is frankly not much easier for native speakers of Chinese to approach the Neijing in its original form than it is for Westerners. Moreover, Mr Ni comes from a medical family spanning several generations of physicians. Being a practitioner myself, I can attest to the correctness of the decisions made in preparing this book. He has done a commendable job in making this ancient classic accessible to modern readers. Chinese physicians make use of this material during nearly every moment spent in the clinic. It is practical in a way that sinologists locked in their ivory towers can scarcely imagine.

Those who would prefer a dry, smugly academic translation with separate footnotes, devoid of historical context or cultural annotation, would do well to investigate Ilza Veith's translation of the Neijing; a valiant effort which inevitably fails as a result of its refusal to acknowledge the living traditions surrounding the text itself.

As an graduate student who has worked on translating the Huangdi Neijing Suwen, I have had the opportunity to place this translation side-by side with most of the others currently in print. This is one of the best we have. The Neijing is often arcane and difficult to penetrate because of opaque language, and it is invariably read with a later commentary alongside to assist in understanding. Ni has provided the commentary and translation integrated on the same page. No, this is not a word-for-word translation, but it does capture the gist of the text and explain how it is understood in contemporary clinical settings more effectively than any other English translation currently available. Until there is a critical academic edition of the text, this is probably as good as it gets. Clinicians will probably prefer this over an academic translation anyway as it smoothes out many of the original's rough edges and internal contradictions, and applies the passages to Chinese medical theory as it is understood today.

The good thing about this book is that is by and large readable. The bad part is that the translation, paraphrasing and commentary are all rolled into one and are indistinquishable to the casual reader. Even when a snipet of text is more or less trying to be faithful to the Nei jing the translation is sometimes clearly unfaithful in meaning. I wouldn't want to try and incorporate the statements of fact and theory in this book into a clinical practice without first checking them out with another translation. However, what this book can do is serve as a source of ideas and inspiration that can then be checked with other translations or texts.

One thing that bothers me is that the author is a doctor of oriental medicine and so is his father, which the author consulted, and yet there are errors in the book. These errors (mostly?) appear to be due to poor translating, which causes erosion of the subtle or secondary meaning of the text and leaves statements which unfortunately are contradictory to what I learned in acupuncture school, have read in other respected medical texts or have experienced clinically. Upon examining the passages in Chinese I can see the true meaning has only been partially captured and hence inadvertantly appears to contradict other texts and clinical experience. This is unfortunate as by and large there is a great deal of useful information in this "translation", but it is unevenly presented, unlabeled (i.e., what part comes from the Nei jing, what part is traditional commentary and what part is the author's opinion) and hence I can't feel totally confident in this book.

I don't think it is possible to translate the Nei jing without a deep understanding of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Classical Chinese. The one part of the Nei jing I have personally translated with great care required a deep understanding of the subject at hand, a consultation or two with my Classical Chinese professor, my Classical Chinese tutor, and discussions with a master Chinese doctor who in turn consulted a commentary as well as consulted with another master Chinese doctor.

Needless to say it was all very time consuming. During my first few attempts I kept discovering new errors in translation due to mistakes in my understanding of Classical Chinese grammer and the subtle meaning of the characters. It took persistent and multiple consultations by me to each of the above persons to get the errors corrected (In other words at first they either missed the errors or were not sure themselves of how to best translate a character or phrase.) and then synthesizing all that each person taught me to arrive at a balanced and correct translation. Then to make sure my translation sounded good I consulted with my brother who is a poet. To further put things in perspective I think the small portion I translated was one of the easier parts of the Nei jing.

In mainland China not that many Chinese study Classical Chinese, most only know the simplified characters as opposed to traditional characters. The meaning of identical characters in Classical Chinese can be very different from Modern Chinese and the grammer is quite different from Modern Chinese grammer. Without a good understanding of Classical Chinese grammer it is not possible to consistently translate the Nei jing correctly. From reading the author's bio there is no indication he studied in Taiwan where Classical Chinese is routinely taught or that he studied Classical Chinese formally. I would think if he had studied Classical Chinese he would have mentioned it, as after all he mentions his TCM training in quite a bit of impressive detail in his bio.

First off I would like to address a point made earlier by another reviewer who called into question Mr. Ni's background in classical Chinese Medicine by stating that he is not trained in Taiwan. I am not sure where the impression is given that Taiwan is the only place where classical Chinese medicine can be learned, but it is erroneous. Mr. Ni is the product of generations of family physicians and who's father is incidently a classical taoist teacher/master of esteemed lineage, so one may rightly assume his training was very classical. Further, Mr. Ni begins his introduction by stating that he never intended a word for word translation but rather a clinically useful text that conveys the thought and intent of the original text in terms that would be more readily accesible to those who are not scholars of ancient Chinese literature. This he does exceptionally well. I have read every translation (and incidently attempted a few of my own) of this classical text and I feel this is by far the best. While not a translation it is the most clinically useful of all of the texts translated to date.

I expected a more, I don't know, historical? scholarly? treatment of the subject of the Suwen. I claim no skill at translation of ancient Chinese characters, nor interpretation of Chinese philosophical writings (ancient or otherwise) but I had hoped for at least some original text or side-by-side comparison of the text and the translation. Maoshing Ni provides neither of these things.

Some people may appreciate the lack of academic interruptions commonly affecting a work of this kind in the form of copious footnotes. Maoshing Ni goes to great pains to incorporate these footnotes directly into the text, but I find this practice more frustrating than the footnotes themselves. There's no indication what is actually translated text and what is explanation inserted by the translator. And while I agree that translations of ancient Chinese are difficult to bring to English, especially those by authors who prided themselves on brevity and multi-layered meanings, the readers' clues typical of most translations (e.g. footnotes, original text, clearly indicated guesswork) were not present in this book and made it a most disappointing read for me.

This translation is a paraphrase at best, and contains some disturbing contradictions to other translations of the same text, including my own spot translations to check on these. While I'm not a classical scholar, some of these are fairly obvious. Also, a lot of interpolated material is not set off in any way. It is interesting to read this translation in the context of the two other main translations now available, Lianshang Wu's (which has the Chinese text, but has a poor English text which is closer to the original) and Veith's (which is more arbitrary, possibly because she had no background in TCM), but don't rely on this for clinical advice, it is spoon feeding you one man's opinion, and in this persons opinion, it isn't very good.

This is an excellent translation. Although it may not be up to scholastic
standards, it is easy to read and understand. Ni has his commentary
integrated with the translation so reading the text flows very smoothly.
I've read many of the books on traditional Chinese medicine that are
available and by comparison, every chapter of the Neijing has enough
information to be a book in itself: it is the source-work, after all.
Thank you for this excellent translation, Dr. Ni.

Its a great book to explain in English the translations of yellow emperor...easy to follow

Well translated and easy to understand the concepts for anyone not familiar with chinese medicine and thought.

The Yellow Emperor Classic is a great book and necessary for any practitioner of Chinese Medicine. The book was in excellent condition and arrived in good shape