20230630 final exam 04

202270081682 周晓兰 Zhou Xiaolan 英语笔译(English translation)

On the Communication Effect in the English Translation of the Analects of Confucius

Zhou Xiaolan, 202270081682

Abstract

The translation of the Analects of Confucius, which is the embodiment of Confucian ideas, aims to disseminate traditional Chinese thought and profround Chinese culture, and promote communication and exchanges between different cultures in the world. In recent years, China's "going out" policy has become an important window for China to enhance its international communication capacity and highlight its cultural influence. As one of the important ways for Chinese culture to go global, Chinese classics translation has become an essential part of cultural exchanges between China and the West. As a symbol of the dissemination of Chinese classics, the Analects of Confucius, rooted in tranditional philosophy, serves as a powerful tool to spread Chinese wisdom to the world. Therefore, on the basis of introducing the Analects of Confucius and its English translation, this paper discusses the communication effect in the English Translation of the Analects of Confucius, and points out that the English translation of the Analects of Confucius plays a vital role in the implementation of China's "going out" policy and in Chinese classics translation, which is conducive to promoting the globalization of Chinese culture.

Key Words

English Translation of the Analects of Confucius; Chinese Classics Translation; Communication Effect; China's "Going out" Policy; Cultural Identity

摘要

《论语》是反映中国古代儒家思想的经典之作，其翻译目的是传播中国传统思想和博大文化，促进世界不同文化之间的沟通和交流。《论语》在西方世界的传播历史也是中西文化交流历史的见证。近年来，中国文化走出去已然成为我国提升国际传播能力，彰显文化影响力的重要窗口。作为中国文化走出去的重要形式，中国文化典籍的译介成为中西方文化交流的重要内容。作为中国文化典籍的代表之作，《论语》根植于传统哲学思想，是传播中国智慧的有力工具。因此，本文在介绍《论语》及其英译状况的基础上，探讨《论语》英译的传播效果，指出《论语》英译对中国文化走出去战略以及典籍英译有着重要的研究价值，有助于推进中华民族文化的全球化。

关键词

《论语》英译；中华典籍外译；传播效果；中国文化走出去；文化身份

Introduction

Culture is crucial for a nation because it affects not only the mindset of the nation, but also the thought and behavior of every member of the nation. In the process of cross-cultural communication, it is of great practical significance to fully understand the roots, inheritance and development of different cultures (Miao Ruixue, 2022). As an important carrier for the inheritance and development of Chinese culture, Chinese classics embody the essence of China's splendid culture for more than 5, 000 years and present the values in Chinese traditional culture. Chinese classics translation is an important part of the dissemination of Chinese culture and one of the important methods to improve China's international communication capacity (Wang Yuan, 2022). As an important component of Chinese classics, the Analects of Confucius has exerted profound influences on Chinese civilization. Compiled by Confucius and his disciples, the Analects of Confucius is a collection of aphorisms and historical anecdotes, embodying the basic values of the Confucian tradition: learning, morality, ritual decorum, and filial piety. Along with other intellectual achievements that have been generated in the formulation and development of the Chinese nation, the Analects of Confucius records the Chinese nation's spiritual activities, rational thinking and cultural achievements in building their homeland, reflects spiritual pursuits of the Chinese nation, and provides a key source of nutrition for the survival and continuous growth of our nation. At the opening ceremony of the International Conference in Commemoration of the 2,565th Anniversary of Confucius' Birth and the fifth Congress of the International Confucian Association, President Xi Jinping said that studying Confucius and Confucianism is an important approach to understanding the national characteristics of the Chinese as well as the historical roots of the spiritual world of the present-day Chinese. The translation of the Analects of Confucius, which is the embodiment of Confucian ideas, aims to disseminate traditional Chinese thought and profround Chinese culture, and promote communication and exchanges between different cultures in the world. In recent years, China's "going out" policy has become an important window for China to enhance its international communication capacity and highlight its cultural influence. As a symbol of the dissemination of Chinese classics, the Analects of Confucius, rooted in tranditional philosophy, serves as a powerful tool to spread Chinese wisdom to the world. Therefore, this paper focuses on the communication effect in the English Translation of the Analects of Confucius and discusses how the English translation of the Analects of Confucius spreads Chinese culture on the basis of being accpted by Western readers.

Literature Review

The translation of the Analects of Confucius followed the mission, trade, and foreign expansion of Western countries. Western missionaries who came to China at the end of the 16th century were the first to translate the Analects into Latin, ans the Latin transaltion was later translated into English and French. With the deepening of cross-cultural communication, the Chinese wisdom in the Analects of Confucius has been noticed by the world. As the essence of Chinese thought, the Analects of Confucius has exerted significant influence not only on the thoughts and culture of Chinese nations, but also on world civilization. In recent years, more importance has been attached to the translation of Chinese classics and their translation studies due to the rising attention on Chinese culture and the enhancement of China's international status. It is also ture of the research on the English translation of the Analects of Confucius (Xu Suxian, 2022).

Through the search on the English translation of the Analects of Confucius as its title, it can be concluded that foreign studies are mainly on keyword translation, comparative research and the introduction of book review.

Michael Nylan (2013) surveyed the work of two aesthetes, Arthur Waley and Li Zehou, whose influential translations of the Analects of Confucius ascribed to Confucius have shaped approaches to the subject of myth, ritual, early history and religion for Anglophone and Sinophone readers. Yu Juan (2014) applied redability theory into translations of the Analects of Confucius in Chinese and English versions, explained the readability statistics and compared the different degrees of simplification in the translation from four aspects: word numbers, lexical density, sentence numbers and average sentence length. Li Li (2015) explored the standard and procedures of legal translation form legal culture, vocabulary selection and grammar selection by taking the translation of the Chinese legal concept of "qinqinxiangyin" put forward by Confucius as an example. Fan Min (2015) attempted to explore how the ideological factors influence the cultural transmission of Confucianism through a comparative analysis of the translation of the key concepts in the two versions by James Legge and Ku Hung-ming from the ideological perspective. Xiaojuan Peng (2018) compared different English versions of the Analects of Confucius, investigated the thought model of translating Chinese classics and put forward the commonly used thought model of translating Chinese classics. Benjamin Machael Giaimo (2020) compared the similarities between the saint in the Analects of Confucius and classical characters in American movies and translated "Junzi" in terms of current popular sayings in America.

Against the backdrop of the implementation of of China's "going out" policy, domestic scholars paid more attention to the study of English translation of the Analects of Confucius. Generally speaking, their studies focus on the translation of keywords and translation strategies in different English versions the Analects of Confucius.

Due to different cultural backgrounds and cross-cultural transformation form ancient Chinese to English, the translation of keywords plays a significant role in the translation of the Analects of Confucius and their successful translation serves as a key to understanding the core thoughts and social value in the Analects of Confucius at that time. Qian Yaxu and Ji Mofang (2013) probed into different translations of the Analects of Confucius on the shift translation of "Ren" in the Analects of Confucius by Arthur Waley and that by An Lezhe & Luo Siwen. Zhang Zheng and Hu Wenxiao (2015) analyzed the translation of "Tian" and its enlightenment to the English translation of Chinese culture-loaded words. Han Xing and Han Qiuyu (2016) compared the English translation of Junzi concept in Confucian culture in the Analects of Confucius by James Legge and Arthur Waley. Cai Xinle (2017) explored the Chinese and English translation of "Wen" in the Analects of Confucius with the Dao of Yin and Yang as the methodology in the interpretation of "Ruism in terms of Ruism". And then he (2020) analyzed the representation of the spirit of the sage on the English translation of the Analects of Confucius in the direction of the "Heart-Resources". On the basis of his previous studies, Cai Xinle (2022) discussed the returing of Ruist learning to itself in the English translation of the Analects of Confucius. Dai Wei (2022) focused on the translation of "Tian", "Ming", "Gui", "Shen" in Confucius' religious view.

Translators are the major participants of translation activities and translation strategies they choose have great impacts on their translations which attract many scholars' attention. Liu Baiyu, Hu Qing and Liu Xiaqing (2011) studied translation strategies of Chinese traditional cultural elements by taking the translation of a core word "Ren" in the Analects of Confucius. Tu Guoyuan and Xu Lei(2012) probed into the translation strategies of Ku Hung-ming's discourses and sayings of Confucius from a metonymic perspective based on the revelation of national culture. Liu Xueqin (2013) analyzed the code switching in Ku Hung-ming's, James Legge's, and William Soothill's English versions of the Analects of Confucius. Liu Yanrong (2015) conducted a comparative study of three English versions of the Analects of Confucius from the perspective of Skopos Theory. Shang Yanyan and Yang Ping(2017) illuminated translator's active selection on translational eco-environment to justify the translator-centeredness in the translation process and to clarify one ambiguous point in Eco-translatology. Xu Jun and Xiao Haiyan (2018) compared Legge and Waley's translations of the Analects of Confucius, explored the influence of ideology and poetics on the translation, and analyzed how translators make adaptive decisions in the manipulation of ideology and poetics. Yang Lin (2020) analyzed the choice made by the translators in translating Chinese classics, taking the English translation of the Analects of Confucius as an example. Zhang Xiaoman and Sun Xiaolu (2022) focused on the dialogues in the homogenous Context of the English translation of the Analects of Confucius by Ku Hung-ming.

It can be concluded that the comparative study of different versions of the Analects of Confucius, the translation of key words and translation strategies have always been the focus of domestic scholars. And with the deeping of cross-cultural comminication, domestic scholars began to analyze the English translation from communication. Zhang Meng and Dong Yan (2020) studied the translation and dissemination of the Analects of Confucius in English-speaking countries. To explore a way to promote the external communication of the translation of the Analects of Confucius, Zhang Xiaoman and Bian Zhenxiang (2021) put forward new frontiers of English translation of the Analects of Confucius: from cooperative translation to cross media translation. Chu Changsheng and Gao Luyi (2022) studied the translator's subjectivity and the communication effect in the English translation of the Analects of Confucius. To promote overseas dissemination of Chinese classics, Li Gang, Yue Manman and Li Jinshu focused on mistranslations of the Analects of Confucius by Ku Hung-ming and its enlightment for spreading Chinese culture from a historical and cultural perspective. Against the backdrop of promoting the globalization of Chinese culture, all these studies are conducive to spreading Chinese culture and promoting recption of Chinese culture in Western countries.

To sum up, domestic and foreign researches on the English translation of the Analects of Confucius are mainly focusedd on the translation of keywords and translation strategies. And with the deeping of cross-cultural comminication, the communication effect in the English translation of the Analects of Confucius has attracted much attention. Therefore, on the basis of introducing the Analects of Confucius and its English translation, the next part discusses the communication effect in the English translation of the Analects of Confucius, and points out that the English translation of the Analects of Confucius plays a vital role in the implementation of China's "going out" policy and in Chinese classics translation, which is conducive to promoting the globalization of Chinese culture.

And as mentioned above, translators are the major participants of translation activities and translation strategies they choose have great impacts on their translations. Therefore, according to the cultural identity of the translators, this paper divides the history of the English translation of the Analects of Confucius into three periods, analyzes the choices of translators with different cultural identities in different historical contexts and the communication effects of their translations, so as to discusse how to better promote Chinese classics translation in the new era.

The Beginning Period: English Translation and Dissemination of the Analects of Confucius by Missionaries

In the West, the English translation of the Analects was initiated by the Jesuits. The earliest translation of the Analects was Matteo Ricci's Latin translation in 1594, which became the elementary textbook for the Jesuits to study Chinese at that time. In 1687, the Belgian missionary Philippe Couplet published a Latin version of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus in Paris, and in 1691, the book was translated into English and published in London under the title The Morals of Confucius, A Chinese Philosopher. However, it is not strictly an English translation of the Analects of Confucius, because the book contains many aspects such as the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Analects of Confucius. And the Jesuits focused on the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean when translating, and only selected some of the aphorisms of the Analects. From 1809 to 1910, Protestant missionaries began translating the Analects and spreading Confucianism to the West. Representative figures include Marshman, Rev. David Collie, James Legge, and William Edward Soothill.

In 1809, a stanza translation of the Analects by English Baptist missionary Marshman was published, the first English translation directly from the Chinese version. This translation became an important reference for James Legge's later translation, and also an important source of Emerson and Thoreau's Oriental philosophy. Rev. David Collie completed the translation of the Four Books in 1827, and his translation has become an important text for the western academic circle to study Chinese Confucianism. Rev. David Collie believed that the primary purpose of translating the Four Books into English is to improve Westerners' learning of Chinese knowledge. James Legge was the first one who had studied the Confucius classics systematically and who used "Analects" as the title of the English translation. One of the characteristics of Legge's translation is that he translated alomost literally, with the original text attached. To make the text more easily understood, he added a lot of notes, which even overwhelm the original and translated text. His efforts were generally recognized and his translation became a model of translation for sinologists and scholars who are interested in Chinese culture (Zhao Chao, 2021). Like other missionaries who translated Chinese classics, Legge wanted, through his translation, more missionaries to master the Chinese classics and learn about the morals, values and basic thoughts established by the ancient Chinese sages, thus to accomplish their mission to convey the voice of God. William Edward Soothill completed a new translation of the Analects in 1906. Having had an in-depth study of Confucianism, he believed that the wisdom of ancient Chinese thought was a reflection on the truth and a precious heritage of human culture.

Early translations of the Analects served two purposes. One was as a textbook for learning Chinese, but the main purpose was to preach. In the eyes of the Jesuits, China had a long history of civilization and superior ethical philosophy, and Confucius was an exotic witness to the truth of Christian doctrine. Matteo Ricci appreciated the Analects and praised it as the "Book of Wisdom". But his translation aimed to arouse Chinese's interest in Christianity, help integrate Christian doctrine into the "Confucian context", and realize its influence on Chinese (Xu Lei, 2018). As the international situation continued to change, Protestant missionaries began to view Chinese classics with a cultural superiority. The translator was a cultural imperialist, whose purpose was to carry out imperialist aggression and help missionaries understand China. Guided by religious belief and value orientation, Legge interpreted "Tian" as "heaven, God" and Confucius as a "devout Christian" to replace Confucianism with Christianity. Nevertheless, his translation has exerted a positive influence on the transmission of the Analects and it became a model of translation for sinologists and scholars who are interested in Chinese culture. Through the translations and commentaries of missionaries, the moral spirit and image of Confucius contained in the Analects have deeply impressed Western people, causing "Confucian fever" among many thinkers, of which Voltaire is a representative. The spirit of tolerance, benevolence and rationality of Confucianism injected fresh vitality into the European intellectual circle.

The Development Period: English Translation and Dissemination of the Analects of Confucius by Britain and American Sinologists and Chinese translators

One of the characteristics of the English translation in this period is that the identities of the translators are multiple. The translators include Chinese translators, sinologist translators such as Lionel Giles, and some translators from the religious circle, such as Allen Upward and William Edward Soothill. In 1898, two Chinese, Ku Hung-ming and Ma Yutong, joined the translators of the Analects of Confucius, which broke the discourse hegemony of western missionaries and made a sound of Chinese people’s own interpretation of the Analects of Confucius to the world. Ku Hung-ming believed that missionaries represented by Legge have misinterpreted the Confucian classics, leading to misunderstanding and prejudice against Chinese civilization in the West. He firmly held the view that Chinese traditional culture can save China and the West. And he attempted to disseminate Chinese classics to the world through translation. As an influential Chinese translator, he also gained international recognition. In 1979, another Chinese scholar D.C. Lau’s translation of the Analects was published in New York. His translation is fluent and readable, conveying Chinese ideas subtly and accurately, and have become classics for understanding Chinese culture. Many sinologists have also devoted themselves to the translation of the Analects in this period. In 1907, the British sinologist Lionel Giles was the first Western scholar to translate the Analects into English. He adhered to the academic standard, separated the study of Sinology from missionary and politics, opposed the interpretation of Chinese classics from the perspective of Christian theology, and believed that Chinese thought was purer and more advanced, and that the translation should try to restore the authenticity and morality of Chinese classics. H.G. Creel was a pioneer in the field of Sinology in the United States and one of the few Sinologists in the United States with a high level of knowledge of ancient Chinese, who emphasized the understanding of Chinese culture through ancient Chinese. Harvard Professor James R. Ware's translation of the Analects, published in 1950, was the first fully translated offprint of the Analects by a native translator in the United States. Characterized by plain language and short introductions, his translation is suitable for beginners of Confucianism or the American public. A distinctive feature of his translation is the creation of new words to translate the core terminology of the Analects, but his translation has also been criticized by sinologists as too liberal. In addition to the translators mentioned above, there are many others who devoted themselves to the study and translation of Confucianism during this period. In the 90s of the 20th century, with the rapid development of China, academic circles at home and abroad showed a stronger desire to study Chinese classics. Translations of the Analects have exploded, with several English translations published in 1990-2000.

Another noteworthy characteristic is that three influential figures in academic and intellectual circles published their translations of the Analects before the second world war. They are the famous poet of imagism, Ezra Pound(1937), Arthur Waley (1938), who gained his fame by translating ancient Chinese poems, and Lin Yuntang (1938), who is famous as one of the masters of the Chinese culture. Their translations of the Analects represent their identities respectively. Pound, who had experienced two world wars, lost faith in Christian civilization, believing that Confucianism was superior to Christianity, and that Chinese culture was rich in wisdom and could heal the devastated Western society. He selected several chapters and translated them creatively in a concise and imagist style. Pound's translation of the Analects is one of the more influential translations in the United States. In Waley’s translation, popular and fluent language is used and the translation is aimed at common readers which continued the characteristics of his translation of Chinese ancient poems. Lin Yutang took promoting national culture as his duty and incorporated the Analects into his book The Wisdom of Confucius (Zhao Chao, 2021). In the process of translation, for the full understanding of the American people, he used prose-style English to spread esoteric Chinese philosophical ideas to the West in elegant and fluent language.

In the Western world, the Analects and Confucius went through a process from existence in comparison with Jesus to independent existence. In the West, Confucius became the embodiment of different identities. At different times, he was given a variety of different images, such as elite leadership, aristocracy, wisdom, ignorance, morality, etc. Although the image of Confucius has been mutated or even misread in the interpretation of Western missionaries and sinologists, the interpretation of the diversity of Confucius has also attracted the attention of more Western public readers to the East world, laying the foundation for the western transmission of Chinese culture. British and American sinologists showed unique cultural identities when translating Chinese classics, representing Western interpretations of Chinese culture. Their original intention was to present Chinese images to the West, but because of their own position and identity, they inevitably rewrote Chinese culture in their translations. With the deepening of their study of Chinese classics, they have gradually been able to analyze Chinese history and reality more objectively. China's unique culture, especially philosophical thought, can also help the West to re-examine its own culture and civilization through translation. During this period, sinologists made fruitful achievements in translating the Analects of Confucius. Chinese translators also joined the translators of the Analects of Confucius, which broke the discourse hegemony of western missionaries and made a sound of Chinese people's own interpretation of the Analects of Confucius to the world. The Analects of Confucius attracted a wider audience and aroused more people's interest in Chinese culture, which promoted communication between China and the world.