TITLE:
On Mencius’ Key Philosophical Term: Yi C-E Translation in the Perspective of Reception Theory
AUTHORS:
Lanlan Lai, Pu Dong, Yeye Liu, Xiaoying Chen
KEYWORDS:
Mencius, English Versions, Reception Theory, Yi
JOURNAL NAME:
Chinese Studies,
Vol.7 No.4,
November
5,
2018
ABSTRACT: Mencius keeps a record of political
activities, doctrine and philosophy, moral principles and educational ideology
of the whole life of Mencius by way of narration and dialogue and also
describes the debate over the inborn goodness of human nature, being one of the
most influential classic works, which has a profound influence on Chinese
philosophy. With the guidance of Reception Theory, based on the corpus of James
Legge, the Library of Chinese Classics (hereafter short for LCC) and D. C. Lau’s
versions of Mencius, a comparative
study will be conducted on the key philosophical term: Yi (义).
Quantitative analysis shows that Yi rendered
as “righteousness/righteous”, which is the most widely accepted in Legge’s and
LCC’s versions with its frequency at the times of 95 and 77 respectively,
however, Lau’s seems to be more various using words such as “right/rightness,
duties and moral”. The results show that the version of Lau’s shares the same
horizon of expectations with the source text while those of Legge’s and LCC’s
with the target readers.