Abstract

Tao Te Ching is the most translated Chinese classic, that has been translated into many languages in the world includes Indonesian. This paper is trying to analyze the earliest translation text by Tan Soe Djwan (1937), focusing on translator’s understanding on Tao Te Ching the most important philosophical term--Tao(道), and some translation phenomena exists in the translation text. This paper will limit its scope to Tao Ching (chapter 1-37). This is a qualitative descriptive research, that data collection is collected from many literature resources related to Tao The Ching study either in Indonesian or Chinese, to support researcher understanding to resource text. Results of the research shows that translator understood Tao as the law/the rule of (God and nature). This translation text was the only Indonesian translation text that work in detail in word level translation. Although occur some problems in its translation (in word, phrase, sentence and grammar level), but generally this translation text has made a good contribution to decipher Tao philosophy in Indonesia.