question on use of "'" in English translation

Translations to and from Chinese.
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lotusblossom
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Joined: Fri Apr 18, 2008 2:42 pm
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question on use of "'" in English translation

Post by lotusblossom »

I am reading an English translation of Tai Kung's "Six Secret Teachings." In it the author writes of "Civil T'ao," "Martial T'ao," "Dragon T'ao," etc. My question is why does he put a "'" after the T in Tao? Does T'ao mean the same thing as Tao or does the "'" change the meaning? Thank you for your help!
duaaagiii
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Joined: Sun Feb 25, 2007 8:17 am

Post by duaaagiii »

Tao and T'ao are different. You can think of t and t' as two different letters.

The apostrophe indicates aspiration in the Wade-Giles romanization system.

In "t'ao", the t' is aspirated (like in the English word "tower").
In "tao", the t is unaspirated (like the letter "d" at the beginning of a word in English).

In this context, T'ao (韜) means "military strategy".
Tao as in "way (of life)" or "Taoism" does not have an apostrophe.
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