Well, I’ve always been curious about the I Ching, and with the internet being so full of stuff these days, I decided to check out the online Wilhelm version of the I Ching. I started by doing a simple search on my browser. Just typed in “I Ching online Wilhelm” and hit enter. There were tons of results popping up right away.
I clicked on a few of the top – ranked websites. On the first one, I had to create an account. It was a bit of a hassle, but I filled in my email and a password. Then I started looking around. The interface was kind of clunky. It was hard to find where they actually presented the I Ching content.
Once I found it, I noticed that the text seemed a bit off. Some of the translations didn’t look right to me. I remembered hearing from an old friend, who’s into Chinese philosophy, that the Wilhelm translation is supposed to be pretty good. But this online version just didn’t seem to match up with what I’d heard.
I decided to cross – reference. I went to another website that offered the I Ching Wilhelm translation. This one didn’t require an account, which was nice. But when I compared the texts between the two sites, there were still differences. Some words were translated differently, and the overall flow of the text was a bit inconsistent.
I also tried to find some reviews. I scrolled through the comment sections on these sites. Some people said it was great, but others were complaining about the same things I noticed. One guy said he’d bought the physical Wilhelm book and the online version was way off.
To really get to the bottom of it, I reached out to a few online forums where people talk about the I Ching. I asked if anyone had experience with the online Wilhelm version. A few experts chimed in. They said that a lot of online versions are just scanned and poorly converted from the original book. There could be errors in the scanning process, or the people converting it might not understand the nuances of the translation.
After all this research, I came to the conclusion that the reliability of the online Wilhelm I Ching is pretty questionable. There are so many discrepancies between different online versions and what the experts say about the original translation. If you’re really serious about studying the I Ching with the Wilhelm translation, it might be better to just buy the physical book. That way, you can be sure you’re getting the real deal.
