The Dissemination and Reception of the Economic Thoughts in Ancient China Overseas: An Application in Chinese Translations of The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School ()
1. Introduction
The ancient Chinese economic thoughts, which are built on a highly developed agricultural civilization, are not only the source of east Asian economic thoughts but also enlighten the establishment of modern economics in the West. For example, it influences French physiocracy (Tan, 1992), the construction of the Japanese management model and American agricultural legislation and macroeconomic stability during Roosevelt’s New Deal. In the Agricultural Adjustment Act, Henry Wallace drew lessons from the concept, the ever-normal granary, which was from Chen Huan-Chang’s The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School (Bodde, 1946). Chen’s discussion of the ever-normal granary provided a solution to the agricultural economic problems of the United States and valuable experience for the world in solving long-term agricultural problems. The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School is a doctoral dissertation completed at Columbia University in 1911 by Chen Huan-Chang, a famous thinker and social activist in the late Qing Dynasty. In his work, Chen Huan-Chang respectively discussed the general economic doctrines of Confucius and his school on consumption, production, distribution and public property in accordance with the writing convention of Western economics. Chen Huan-Chang examined his ideas with economic thoughts and policies recorded in Chinese ancient books, and presented the outline of ancient Chinese economic doctrines and the basic methods for studying the history of Chinese economic thoughts. The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School attracted attention of Western scholars, while at home, the value of this work was buried for a long time. Chinese translations were published after nearly a century by Zhai Yuzhong, Song Mingli in 2009, and Han Hua in 2010. The publication of Chinese translations has raised the visibility of this work and attracted more researchers to explore the academic value of the book. With the development of studies and translation on this work, there are still few researches that mention or compare Chinese translations. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze and compare three Chinese translations with the rewriting theory by Andre Lefevere as a theoretical framework, which will provide references to translate works including Chinese culture or thoughts into Chinese and explore translators’ subjectivity in the translation process. The paper holds that the ideology and the poetics from the context of the source text and target texts all affected the translators during the translation process. Under the manipulation of ideology and poetics, translators possess the subjectivity to conform or rebel against these manipulations, and the choice of translators can be reflected in their translations. After the analysis of three Chinese translations, it is found that Han’s translation maximally retains the structure and expressions of the source text, while Zhai’s translation and Song’s translation have modifications in varying degrees. All translators’ actions depend on their understanding of the source text or their own preferences, which have their own pros and cons.
2. Literature Review
The ancient Chinese economic thoughts in The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School swiftly caught the attention of Western scholars. As the work was just published, Professor Friedrich Hirth and Henry Seager wrote the foreword and preface for it. They both praised Chen’s profound knowledge of Chinese and Western learning, which convinced the readers of the profundity of Confucianism, and showed the success of Chen’s writing. These two professors’ recognition also contributed to its dissemination.
Within the first three years of its publication, many Western economics and sinology journals published high-level professional book reviews, (e.g. Bullock, 1912; Ross, 1912; Keynes, 1912) which gave the work a full range of appreciation and promotion in terms of research content, research methodology, academic value and so on. In July 1912, The English Historical Review published a book review by Thomas Lowndes Bullock, a professor of Chinese Studies at Oxford University. In this review, Bullock gave this work a high rating, holding that this is a work that can be done by few people, and praised Chen’s precise grasp of ancient Chinese economic thoughts and the knowledge of Western political economics, both of which made his paper produce “a great mass of valuable information” for Western readers (Bullock, 1912). He also noted that this work lacked an in-depth analysis of the links between economic theory and policy in ancient China. In December of the same year, E. Rose, a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin System, published a book review in The American Economic Review. Rose illustrated the influence and role of Chen’s work that bridged the East and West in the history of Western political economy, and he mentioned that this work is not only about political economy but also a work of ethics and sociology (Ross, 1912). Chen’s work was also reviewed by the famous economist John Maynard Keynes, who just became editor-in-chief of The Economic Journal in 1912. Keynes explained that The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School is packed with numerous information including not only Chinese economic thoughts, but also quotations from ancient Chinese books and records. Keynes believed that a great deal of information in the book, such as Confucius’ principle of eugenics, the principle of labor mobility, or the history of China’s taxation system, would be strongly attractive to Western political economists (Keynes, 1912). There are, of course, reviews that pointed out defects in the work. A review from The American Journal of Theology held that there was “an amount of oriental exaggeration” in this work “with the curious conceit which characterizes many of its pages”. For instance, this review disagreed with Chen’s statement that “this is the first attempt to present The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School in a systematic form in any language” by holding that Chen’s opinion dismissed the contributions of Western Sinologists, as well as pointed some examples of lacking evidence (F, 1912). More book reviews will be shown in the following Table 1.
In addition, some Western political economists took this work as an important document. In his book Konfuziamismus und Taoismus (Confucianism and Taoism), Max Weber, a famous German sociologist listed Chen’s work as an important reference when he mentioned Confucianism. Joseph Alois Schumpeter, an American economist, also cited this book in his History of Economic Analysis. The quotations by Weber and Schumpeter in their works contributed to the widespread dissemination of this work in the Western world. Subsequent
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Table 1. The information of book reviews.
works also introduced or quoted The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School, for example William Theodore de Bary’s East Asian Civilizations: A Dialogue in Five Stages. In his book, de Bary described Chen’s work as covering the politics of Confucianism and that the system of the ever-normal granary solved the dilemma of the Roosevelt administration (De Bary, 1988). Morgen Witzel in his book, Fifty Key Figures in Management, also pointed the most striking aspect of Confucianism was that unlike Western economic theory, which often focused on increasing supply to meet demand, Confucianism preferred to limit demand. At the same time, Confucius not only advocated economic controls such as decrees against consumption to curb the demand for luxury goods, but also proposed moral and social education to suppress human desires (Witzel, 2003: p. 159).
The influence of this work on Western political economics could also be seen in its publication. Since the free publication by Columbia University in 1911, it has been reprinted until now in more than 29 editions. The constant reprinting was also accompanied by new prefaces by prominent political economists at that time, which contributed to its spread and influence. The situation of publication can be seen in the following Table 2.
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Table 2. The information of publication.
At the beginning of its publication, The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School was also well received in China. Some Chinese newspapers praised it building a bridge between the East and West, and acknowledged Chen’s historical contribution. However, as Chen Huan-Chang devoted himself to flourishing Confucianism after he returned to China, and the lack of Chinese translations of this work, the value of it was gradually buried.
It was not until 1984 that Hu (1984) first introduced Chen’s work from the perspective of intellectual history. In his view, it was the first work on ancient Chinese economic thoughts written by a Chinese scholar and published overseas. After that, more researchers mentioned and confirmed the pioneering role of this work in the study of ancient Chinese economic thoughts (e.g. Tan, 1992; Ye, 1998; Wu, 1995; Zhu, 2008).
Since entering the 21st century, researches on Chen Huan-Chang and his work have gradually increased and become more specialized. The earliest article dated back to 1999. In this article, Han (1999) introduced Chen Huan-Chang and his doctoral thesis, explained Chen Huan-Chang’s views and solutions for China’s financial problems at that time, and affirmed his modern interpretation of ancient Chinese records by merging Chinese and Western thoughts. The following studies can be broadly divided into three categories: The first kind focused on Chen’s work, The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School. In these researches, the work was introduced from the perspective of academic experience, interpretation of content ideas, its influence and so on, in order to attract attention for this work, signaling the influence of ancient Chinese economic thoughts on Western economics (e.g. Ye, 1998; Han, 1999; Li, 2001); The second one concerned to explore the Confucian ideas expressed in the book, such as the religious and economic transformation of Confucianism and the Confucian socialism (e.g. Zhou, 2016a, 2016b; Tang, 2017); Studies from the third category viewed Chen and his work from a macro perspective. Some researchers put this work in the establishment and development of Confucian economic history or even in the context of Chinese economic history (e.g. Zou, 2008; Wan, 2013; Zou & Huang, 2013).
3. A Theoretical Framework, Research Goals and Research Methods
Lefevere’s rewriting theory provides a new point of view to analyze the translation process. For Lefevere, translation is the most obviously recognizable type of rewriting, and it is influential as translation can transmit the text or the author “beyond the boundaries of their culture of origin” (Lefevere, 1992: p. 9). The researches on Lefevere’s rewriting theory can be roughly divided into two parts, one is introduction and critical thinking on not only the theory itself but also the development (e.g. Chen, Wen, & Zhang, 2011; Geng, 2017; Chai & Zhao, 2021); the other is the application of the theory (e.g. Wen & Lin, 2006; Hu, 2014). As Lefevere expounded elements manipulating translators’ rewriting process: ideology, poetics, patronage, universe of discourse, the development of language and education, etc. However, the application of the rewriting theory mostly focuses on the first three points. For example, Wen & Lin (2006) explored the Chinese translations of Ode with ideology and poetics as the points; Hu (2014) particularly discussed the influence of ideology on the translation of political texts, and revealed the dilemma of translators confronting the meaning of original text and reader’s habits of mind. There are also some researchers explored the application of this theory in multimodal translation (Lv & Li, 2013; Zhang, 2009). Lefevere emphasized the manipulation of ideology and poetics, which may lead to neglect of the subjectivity of translators in the analysis of translations (Geng, 2017).
In the literary system, the translation functions are controlled by two main factors: one is “professionals in the literary system, who partly determine the dominant poetics, and the other is patronage outside the literary system, which partly determines the ideology” (Munday, 2016). Both ideology and poetics participate in the manipulation of the translation process, which can be conformed or rebelled by translators, and translation strategies used indirectly reflect translators’ subjectivity. Depending on the analysis of these two aspects, this paper attempts to figure out the manipulation of ideology and poetics and the translation strategies chosen by translators in these three Chinese translations. Some representative examples will be selected and analyzed to illustrate the manipulation of ideology and poetics on the translations. This paper practices a study on the translation strategies chosen by translators between the dominant ideology and poetics and their own individual ideology and poetics.
4. The Application of the Rewriting Theory in the Analysis of the Chinese Translations of The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School
An Analysis from the Ideology Perspective
The ideology is one element of patronage in Lefevere’s rewriting theory, and this paper will focus on the ideology as the glaring differences between the source and target language context. The ideology constrains the choice and development of the subject and the form matter (Lefevere, 1992). In this part, the dominant ideologies of the source and the target context, which influence the form and expression in the translations, will be discussed and compared, and then how the translators deal with these manipulations (conforming or rebelling) will be shown and discussed. The source text is written in English by a Chinese in 1911, while the three translations were translated into Chinese after nearly a century. Therefore, the dilemma of the time and space between the source text and the target texts, and the familiar cultural content lead the translators to choose different translation strategies based on their comprehension of the source text and individual ideology and poetics.
In modern times (after the 1840s), China was forced to participate in the process of economic globalization, which not only had a significant impact on China’s material life at that time, but also on people’s mental life. Confronting the disparity between China and the West, Chinese people began a vigorous road to “introduce Western learning to the East”. In addition to importing advanced technology from the West, the Chinese government also sent students abroad to study applied knowledge to cultivate men of insight. At that time, Chinese people not only actively sought a way to national prosperity, but also began to reflect on the reasons why China was underdeveloped. Simultaneously, a large number of Confucians made a reflection and then attempted to reform. From the Western Affairs Movement to the Reform Movement of 1898, the traditional Confucians took different approaches to transformation in the face of internal and external troubles. Unfortunately, these movements eventually ended in failure. Since the spread of western thoughts in China and the failure of Confucians’ reform, there is a huge impact on the existing Confucian value system, so Chinese people took Confucianism as the culprit of China’s backwardness. In such a critical situation, a group of Confucian realized that Confucianism desperately needed transformation. Chen Huan-Chang was influenced by his teacher Kang Youwei, and inspired by Western political economics during his overseas study. Chen eventually chose to transform Confucianism in religious and economic approaches. His dissertation, The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School, combed the ancient Chinese economic thoughts with Western political economics theory as the theoretic framework, not only providing a large number of materials for Western academic research but also ideas for the development of Confucianism.
Although Chen Huan-Chang planned to translate his work into Chinese, it did not come true due to various reasons. In this century, the Chinese government strives to develop Chinese excellent traditional culture with Chinese characteristics, and commits to the conversation and dissemination of these precious cultures. As its unique perspective and profound influence abroad, Chen’s work came into Chinese scholars’ sight. In 2005, Yuelu Academy reprinted the original edition in 1911 in China, which contributed to the spread and research of this work. With the development of the relative studies, Chinese translations of this work are urgently required. In 2009, Zhai Yuzhong, a sinology scholar and financial commentator, translated and published a Chinese translation, and in the same year, Song Mingli’s Chinese version was also published. One year later, a Chinese translation by Han Hua, a research librarian of the National Library of China and a postdoctoral in the Institute of Qing History, was published.
It is quite different in the time and space between the source text and Chinese translations, so translators will need to deal with their strategies in the translation process. In the source text, Chen discussed Chinese economic thoughts by citing numerous ancient Chinese books as evidence, most of which were directly translated from the Confucius classics by Chen himself or cited from The Chinese Classics by James Legge. As a result, how to handle these translated Chinese classics becomes a problem for the translators (Table 3 & Table 4).
From these two examples, it can be found that Han’s translation exactly retains annotations and footnotes in the source text, which contain the opinions of the author. Besides, Han’s translation adds the correspondent Chinese reference of quotations to show the authentic and compelling documentary foundation of Chen’s work and provide the reader a way to understand the source text better. In Zhai’s translation, many footnotes of the references in the source context were deleted (as in Example 2), and most annotations were kept in his translation. Zhai mentions that he does not list a few insignificant notes, especially some notes that are added for Western readers (Zhai, 2009: p. 4). In Example 1, the source text cites a sentence from the Book of Change, and Zhai’s translation literally translated the sentence directly. At the same time, Zhai’s translation adds some footnotes to explain the meanings of quotations from ancient Chinese books which would help the reader to comprehend the source text. Song’s translation also cites the original text in Chinese references, such as in Example 1 and 2, but Song does not provide the source of these references neither in the target context nor the source context, which may increase the fluency in reading, but weaken the reliability of Chen’s opinion (Table 3 and Table 4).
The translation of the word “economics” undergoes changes since the 19th
century, and the corresponding Chinese characters vary according to the understanding of contemporaries. The word “economics” was rendered as “富国策” (strategies of enriching the country), “理财学” (studies of administering wealth), “计学” (studies of livelihood) and gradually “经济学” (economics) had been accepted now. Chen Huan-Chang preferred the term “理财学” at that time and held that the meaning of “经济” is too broad, which “generally means statesmanship, and covers the whole field of governmental action” (Chen, 2005: p. 48). In the source text, the author put forward his ideas in Chapter V including the definition of “economics” and relation of it to other sciences. However, the translators render this word in different ways. In the title, Song’s translation adopts “经济学”, which follows current target context, and Han’s translation chooses to render this word according to author’s times, while Zhai contains both two versions together. In the following parts, translations of Zhai and Song both keep English words “economics” and add annotations to explain the change about the Chinese translations of the word “economics”, which help the reader comprehend author’s opinion and the content in this part. While Han’s translation directly translates “economics” as “经济学” without any explanation for the reader, and the co-occurrence of words like “经济”, “经济学” and “理财” which may confuse the reader (Table 5).
An Analysis from the Poetics Perspective
Lefevere analyzes two components of poetics, one is an inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs, prototypical characters and situations, and symbols; the other is the concept of the role of literature, which covers not only the content and structure inside the literature, but the relation of literature to the social system in which it exists (Lefevere, 1992: p. 26). Based on Lefevere’s theory, this part will discuss the genre and character of Confucius between the source text and target texts as examples to explore the manipulation and translators’ subjectivity (Table 6 and Table 7).
The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School is a dissertation in 1910, so the structure of it follows the standard of Western thesis writing at that time. The dissertation includes the author’s preface (implying the abstract and acknowledgment), main body, two appendixes (including Table of Chinese chronology and lists of authorities in English and Chinese) and an index, and then it was published by the Columbia University in 1911 with a foreword by Friedrich Hirth and a preface by Henry R. Seager. The structure of the source text, especially the appendixes and index, shows that it is a dissertation, so the translators should consider how to present these information in their translations, which reflects the translators’ perspectives toward the source text. In Table 6, Han’s translation maximally preserves compositions of the source text, and only deletes the index, which makes the translation close to the source text. At the end of her translation, Han writes an afterword to express the reason and feelings of translation, attaching some works by the translator. In the afterword, the translator becomes visible and directly speaks to readers. In Zhai’s translation, two appendixes and the index are both cut out, replaced with Chinese content translated by the author, Chen’s speech on this work in 1912 and Keynes’ book review. With this information, author’s ideas and the value of this work can be conveyed to readers, who are able to ponder this work from different approaches. Song’s translation moves the preface and foreword to the appendix in the translation with Keynes’s book review instead before the author’s preface, and the original appendixes and index were replaced by Chen’s speech and book reviews abroad and at home. In addition, Song changes the structure of the source text, which does not render Chen’s intention to classify his dissertation by
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Table 6. The Information of paratexts in Chinses Translations
the Western economics theory.
In these three translations, translators all choose to add annotations in order to achieve comprehensible translations and provide the reader with enough information to understand the author better. The most common translators’ annotations in the translations aim to add extra information for the reader, for example information of people, place, time, references, and sometimes the translators provide the expression which is familiar to the reader because some description by Chen is foreignization. All of Song’s translation and Han’s translation belong to this type, while in Zhai’s translation, there are another two types: one is to point out the faults in the source text and the other is to explain the reasons why Zhai choose the translation strategies in his translation (Table 6).
In his dissertation, Chen Huan-Chang practiced the religious and economic transformation of Confucianism, and held that Confucius was the creator of this religion. Chen expounded his ideas in Chapter IV from the perspectives like the creator, form, follower, and development of Confucianism with references from different ancient Chinese books as evidence, convincing the reader to believe that Confucianism is a religion found by Confucius. Therefore, in the target texts, according to the author, content about Confucius or Confucianism should be translated in a religious way. Three Chinese translations all translate “Confucianism” in the title of Chapter IV as “孔教” (which is literally translated as Confucian religion), which follows the propositions of Chen Huan-Chang himself. However, in other places of translations, not all translators maintain the same translation strategies. In Example 4, Chen Huan-Chang puts forward his assertion that Confucius is “the maker” of Chinese people, but Chinese translators render this word differently. Zhai translated “the maker” as “塑造者” (the shaper), Song as “缔造者” (founder), while Han as “上帝” (the God). The word “maker” has two meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary: one is “a person or thing that makes or produces something”, and the other is “God”. Considering Chen’s motivation in the source text, Han’s translation “上帝” corresponds to the image of Confucius in the source text compared with the other two translations (Table 7).
5. Conclusion
Based on Andre Lefevere’s rewriting theory, this paper conducts a descriptive
and interpretative study of the translation process in the Chinese translations of Chen Huan-Chang’s The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School. Two important approaches of the theory, ideology and poetics are practiced and analyzed in this study to explore the manipulation of the ideology and poetics and translators’ subjectivity. From the analysis, it can be found that the translators will be influenced not only by the target language ideology and poetics, but the ideology and poetics in the source language. The translators, however, have their subjective initiative to conform to or rebel against these manipulations, which can be reflected in their translations. In these three Chinese translations, Han’s translation maximally retains the structure and expressions of the source text, while Zhai’s translation and Song’s translation make some modifications in varying degrees. All of these translation strategies are chosen by the translators depending on their understanding of the source text or their own preference. Through the comparison among Chinese translations of this work, this study provides references for translating works including Chinese culture or thoughts into Chinese and tips of cultural transmission. As the first work published overseas on Chinese ancient economic thoughts written by a Chinese, Chen’s work possesses unparalleled value, which benefits not only Western scholars by obtaining a huge amount of data for subsequent researches, but also Eastern translators and researchers by urging them to explore and transmit excellent traditional culture with Chinese characteristics and presenting their experiences of international communication.
Fund of the Project
This paper marks a stage in a research that was made possible by the funding supported by National Social Science Program (grant #20BYY027); China National Committee for Translation and Interpreting Education (MTIJZW201816), Education Bureau of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Youth Elite Program (grant #NJYT-20-A01), Education Bureau of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Innovative Team Program(grant #2022).
NOTES
*Corresponding author.