英译者韦利翻译的庖丁解牛一段，误把形容庖丁静气凝神以解牛的画面描写成一个很笨拙的厨师，于是语体色彩全面走样。韦利的译文如下：
However，one has only to look at an ordinary carver to see what a difficult business he finds it.One sees how nervous he is while making his preparations，how long he looks，how slowly he moves.Then after some small，niggling strokes of the knife，when he has done no more than detach a few stray fragments from the whole，and even that by dint of continually twisting and turning like a worm burrowing through the earth，he stands back，with his knife in his hand，helplessly gazing this way and that，and after hovering for a long time finally courses a perfectly good knife and puts it back in its case.[55]