The Christian Culture In The Missionaries' Translation Of Lunyu

The recent rapid economic development of China increasingly spreaded its influence on the world. This also attracted more and more foreigners to become interested in the Chinese culture, especially the source of Chinese culture---Confucianism. As the main display of Confucius'ideology, Lunyu naturally had become one of the most translated and interpreted classic works around the world. Because the influence exerted by the teaching of Confucius lasted more than 2000 years, the only way to understand Chinese people was to understand the teaching of Confucius. A view of the fundamental position of Confucius in Chinese history and civilization as well as the tremendous influence of Confucianism in the whole world demonstrated that the translation of Lunyu had remained a flourishing business for such a long time. In the past one century, the translators of Lunyu mainly consisted of western missionaries, western sinologists, and overseas Chinese. Among them the most famous ones were western missionaries.The western missionaries'main task was to spread Gospel in China, and meanwhile to introduce Chinese culture to their own country. Hence, it could be fair to say that missionaries havd contributed a lot to the Sino-Western cultural exchange. Owing to their special identity and missions, their interpretations were inevitably colored by the Christian ideology.This paper tried to adopt Lefevere's ideology theory to analyze the Christian ideology in the missionaries' translation of Lunyu. The ideology dictated the basic strategy the translator was going to use and therefore also dictated solutions to problems concerned with both the'universe of discourse'expressed in the original and the language the original itself was expressed in.This paper first reviewed the development of the ideology theory and the current research situation of the translation of Lunyu bath at home and abroad. Then it analyzed the relationship between the ideology and translation, the ideology of western missionaries from the perspective of the Sino-Western cultural exchange, their preaching strategy, and their view on the Confucianism. A comprehensive exploration of the Christian ideology based on the Lefevere's ideology theory revealed that these missionaries translated Chinese classics with an aim to facilitate their missionary activities while engaging in spreading the Gospel and proselytizing the Chinese. They discovered the best way to win the interest and sympathy of the Chinese was to present Christianity as a doctrine close to Confucianism and to accompany it with scientific instruction. Their translation strategies were characterized by a tendency to Christianize Confucianism and deify Confucianism. They also instilled Christian ideas into Confucian thinking and replaced Chinese philosophies with Christian theologies.