Report On The Translation Of School Sayings Of Confucius(Excerpt)

In recent years, the culture of a country has been increasingly seen as having a vital role to play in the exercise of soft power. In this context, soft power means the use of power derived from cultural capital, hospitality and sharing. In order to enhance China’s cultural soft power, it is important to translate the Chinese classics into English. The texts related to Confucius and Confucianism form a large part of the body of literature that make up the Chinese classics and as such, are responsible for the transmission of much Chinese culture. The Confucian classical literature—Four Books and Five Classics—have been translated into English by various translators, whereas the School Sayings of Confucius is another valuable book that records stories of Confucius, some Chinese rulers and the life and times of the disciples of Confucius, and yet is known by few people outside China.More detailed descriptions on scenes and conversations are recorded in School Sayings of Confucius; therefore, it is intended as a valuable reference for researchers and Confucian scholars by adding comprehensively to the literature of Confucius, bringing attention to the School Sayings of Confucius. Selected chapters of the original book provide the source text and the translator’s intent is to translate them as accurately as possible. This paper reports the translation experience of six chapters of School Sayings of Confucius, providing an explicit description about the task from three sections: task description, process description and case analysis. The section of case analysis serves as the core of this report.To achieve a high-quality target text, the translator used functional equivalence theory as the principal theoretical basis for the translation, but also adopted other translation strategies and skills, such as amplification, omission and conversion etc. to finish the translation. To summarize,the aim of the translation is to enable target readers to access to those aspects of Chinese culture contained within the selected chapters of School Sayings of Confucius, which has been inaccessible for too long.