The system of romanization used in this book to represent the sounds of modern Chinese is a modified version of the one that first appeared in R.H. Mathews’s Chinese-English Dictionary (1931), which itself was based on the earlier publication of Thomas Wade’s Syllabary (1867) and Herbert Giles’s Chinese-English Dictionary (1912). All romanization systems have their shortcomings, but I have found the Wade-Giles the least bizarre. According to this system, aspirated consonants are unvoiced (t’ as in “toy”, ch’ as in “church”) and unaspirated consonants are voiced (t as in “dog” and ch like j in “jam”)—reflecting the system’s European origin. The only unfortunate romanization is the letter j, which is pronounced r, as in “row.” (Compare this to the x, the z, and the q of the Pinyin system devised by the Cultural Revolution’s masters of torture and to which most scholars now adhere for fear of being out of step.) Vowels are generally longer than in English, but the final e or u is given little or no emphasis. Thus, the tzu in Lao-tzu is pronounced the same as the final sound of the word “adze.” In the interest of simplicity I have omitted the umlauts of the Wade-Giles system. And for the names of places and books I have usually omitted apostrophes and hyphens and run words together (e.g. Loyang, instead of Lo-yang, but Ch’ang-an, as it has become customary and avoids ambiguity of where to break the syllables).
As far as I know, this edition is the first in a Western language to include translations of all 224 poems in the Chienchiashih (Poems of the Masters). Admiral Ts’ai T’ing-kan (1861–1935) translated all the four-line poems and published the resulting collection in 1932 with the University of Chicago Press, under the title Chinese Poems in English Rhyme.
Dozens of Chinese commentaries to the Chienchiashih have been published over the years, especially over the past few decades. Although most are too superficial to deserve mention, I have found the following five useful:
Chang Che-yung: Ch’ien-chia-shih p’ing-chu (Shanghai: Huatung Normal University Press, 1982);
T’ang Lin and Yao Feng: Ch’ien-chia-shih chu-hsi (Lanchou: Kansu People’s Press, 1982);
Yang Hung-ju: Ch’ien-chia-shihp’ing-yi (Beijing: Huawen Publishing Company, 1999);
Wang Ch’i-hsing: Ch’ien-chia-shih hsin-chu (Wuhan: Hupei People’s Press, 1981);
Wen Chieh: Hsiang-chieh ch’ien-chia-shih (Hong Kong: Wenkuang Publishing Company, 1987).