＜菜根譚＞的作者是明代洪應明先生。現今流通在世的＜菜根譚＞有乾隆與文政 兩種版本。＜英譯菜根譚＞根據的主要是文政版。翻譯＜菜根譚＞時遭遇到三項困難：一、 ＜菜根譚＞寫成的年代大約在十六世紀，因此書中的用字與現代的中文習慣用法已有出入， 譚成英文就更需斟酌思量。二、＜菜根譚＞全書具有濃厚的儒、道、釋三家色彩。英語系的 一般社會人士對儒、道、釋三家思想的了解極為有限，如何使他們了解作者的思想，不產生 誤解，是一大挑戰。三、＜菜根譚＞經歷了四百多年的時間，早期印刷術不發達，抄錄刻版 的時候，錯誤遺漏在所難免，再加上歷代眾人的增刪，校勘成為翻譯前一項重要而且費時費 力的工作。本文提出個人處理這些困難的方法與原則。
The author of Vegetable Roots is commonly attributed to Hong Ying-ming of the Ming dynasty. Two different editions prevail today, namely the Qianlong edition and the Wenzheng edition. This translation is mainly based on the Wen-zheng edition. Three major difficulties are encountered during translation: 1.Some words in the book have taken on different meanings since its first publication. This in turn complicates what is already a hard translation work. 2. Hong Ying-ming's life philosophy is heavily marked with Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. These three schools of philosophy are foreign to most Westerners. Thus, to successfully convey the author's life philosophy to the English reader becomes an even greater challenge to the translator. 3. Since the last four hundred years, the contents of Vegetable Roots have undergone numerous changes for different reasons. One of the changes is caused by misprint. Proofreading, therefore, becomes an important, necessary, and time-consuming task. Ways and principles to deal with these difficulties are presented in the paper.
