Language and Text
The English-language Analects and Teaching Chinese Studies：Some Reflections on Lesser-known Twentieth Century Translations
T.H.Barrett SOAS（London）
The education system in our country，and no doubt to a greater or lesser degree in others，is failing to cope with the peaceful rise of China to resume the place of global importance that it once held in the somewhat narrower world of times past.The problem is not with the teaching of the Chinese language，but with finding the forms of education that manage to convey exactly what sort of a nation China is.Other nations can and sometimes still do orient themselves towards some past heritage，and fancy themselves the new Rome，or the new Byzantium，or the potential builders of the New Jerusalem.But these fancies are not here，at least，embodied in the educational system.Yet the new China is still in terms of rightful heritage quite simply the old China，and the education system anywhere Chinese has the right，or perhaps even the obligation，to convey that truth，with the result that anyone identifying themselves as Chinese senses some connection with a continuous heritage stretching back far into the past.This remains true even if participation in the global community continues to be a priority for all Chinese intellectuals.Even if they do not choose to draw upon their heritage at all（which does not seem to be exactly the case），the potential remains as a marker of difference from those who look to other heritages.
This is certainly very difficult for most English speakers to grasp.Our language may take us back to Shakespeare—though even his language defeats many schoolchildren today—but not much further，while our school history curriculum，at any rate in England，has given up even on its traditional task of covering the last millennium as a coherent unit，and if this trend is reversed，as seems possible，that still gives a much foreshortened view of history by Chinese standards.The idea of an ancient heritage at some far away point in the past is easy enough to convey，but thinking over a longer continuous span，‘from Plato to NATO’，is something that seems far too challenging for schools and is usually deferred to the university level，if students are asked to engage with it at all.Besides，the only area where a truly ancient heritage remains meaningful—and then only to some—is probably in the sphere of religion，where the Judaeo-Christian tradition foregrounds texts as ancient as those that are available in Chinese.Hence there are possibilities of communication，and my friend，Professor Yao，has done much himself to explore the comparative approach to Chinese and early Judaeo-Christian thought.[1]To the historian，however，the dissimilarities remain important，and very difficult to convey.For example，unless we happen to possess a good command of Hebrew and New Testament Greek，the Bible is always going to be something we approach in translation，within the short span of the history of modern English.By contrast，while it takes as much scholarship to read the Analects well，anyone Chinese will be able to find many phrases in the original that have remained part of the spoken language today.
And to the historian，it is not just then and now that is the problem：it is the years in between，when the Analects was always present to be re-read in a way that no one textual version of the Bible，not even the Vulgate，has been for so long and so widely.Obviously there are books now even in English on the history of the interpretation of the Analects，just as there are histories of Biblical interpretation.[2]But they are works for scholars.And the basic problem in today's world is that a sense of how China draws its strength from depth in time is not something that just scholars need to know，but all men and women who wish to consider themselves educated.Thinking about this，after in the past trying to incorporate historical narratives of interpretation into my own specialized teaching，it seems to me that at least the history of the Analects in the English language itself is now lengthy enough to offer a few opportunities.
The full story of translating the Analects and British scholarship goes back at least to the efforts of Joshua Marshman（1768-1837）in the early nineteenth century，but any broader history of scholarship for present purposes concerns me less than the history of reading the Analects.This topic，too，I do not propose to cover in a comprehensive way，even while merely confining myself to the century before the present one，since in the last few years of the twentieth century a good number of worthwhile new renderings of Confucius have seen the light of day，and no doubt in due course it will become clear which of these show sufficient merit to be reprinted over the course of time.But if asked，as matters stand at the moment，to name the three most prominent translators of the Analects into English of the twentieth century from the point of view of readership rather than scholarship，I would have to list—and would not be alone in this country in listing—James Legge（1815-1895），Arthur Waley（1889-1966）and D.C.Lau（1921-2010）.[3]
The first might seem to be ruled out as a twentieth century translator，given the date of his death，but the printing of his version as part of a bilingual edition containing the original text has meant that he has been kept in print in East Asia，legally or illegally，for decades，and has therefore，especially since the expiry of the legal copyright of his translation，become a favourite source for those who wish to present the Analects or parts of it in an attractive format without the trouble of having to translate it themselves.This phenomenon admittedly is much worse in the case of the Daode jing，but it certainly does occur.[4]Nothing like this refashioning has happened in the case of Arthur Waley's Analects，perhaps because of copyright barriers.But in any case he deserves a mention as the only figure so far whose literary talent has secured a listing of the Analects in general accounts of the history of English literature.[5]His Confucius would no doubt have been printed more frequently in the late twentieth century were it not for the appearance in 1979 of the D.C.Lau version in the Penguin Classics series，based on a further four decades of modern scholarship.As recent obituaries for Professor Lau have stressed，too，few have been more concerned with shades of meaning in both Chinese and English than he，even if Arthur Waley，an inhabitant of the Bloomsbury environment more comfortably at home there than any mere academic，had more of a literary impact across his various publications.[6]
So，the mainstream is easy enough to trace.What is more intriguing is the variety of illustrations of the theme of the strange individual destinies that befall books which emerge when we look beyond that mainstream to the eddying side currents of British Analects scholarship.Here obscurity and prominence，oblivion and acceptance，even within less than a century of time，alternate in a much more complex way.Of course during the half millennium or so of English literary history many books and writers have sunk from sight and then been rediscovered.But by dwelling briefly on how translations of an ancient Chinese text have fared in this respect over a relatively short span of time might perhaps help us to consider how similar processes of transmission and retrieval were played out over the more than five times greater span of Chinese literary history.
The first example that I would like to introduce is that of a work plucked from extreme obscurity after a quarter of a century to become in a new guise a presentation of Confucius that achieved international renown，selling for over two decades thereafter before seeing at least one further reprinting in the late twentieth century，thanks in part（or so it would seem）to the very Confucian virtue of filial piety.[7] The Analects as translated by William Soothill（1861-1935）was first published some years before the start of his British academic career as an Oxford professor，while he was still a missionary educator in East Asia.His attempts at improving on James Legge's pioneering efforts included a scholarly presentation of the original Chinese，since this was not a publishing problem in Yokohama in 1910.But such a work，though now still available in specialist libraries，was scarcely seeking a mass market and certainly does not seem to have found one.Only after the translator's death in the nineteen thirties did Oxford University Press look for an English version of Confucius to include in their World's Classics series，and it seems that they turned for help therefore to one of Britain's best-known writers on China of that period，Lady Dorothy Hosie（1885-1959），widow of the China explorer Sir Alexander Hosie（1853-1925）and，as it happened，daughter of Professor Soothill.Her drastically modified version of her father's work contains no Chinese text but does include an introductory essay on Confucius，quite free from the burden of any academic annotation，from her own hand.[8]As an educator，no doubt Soothill would have approved of his daughter's work；as a scholar，he may have blushed a little.It was，at any rate，only in 1993 that his university managed to replace his daughter's work with a decent substitute from one of its own teachers，someone who incidentally combined his sinology with a long and distinguished career as deviser of crossword puzzles for the New Statesman，Raymond Dawson（1923-2002）.
My next example，from one of the most famous filial sons in British sinology，followed a slightly different course：from prominence to intriguing，even tasteful obscurity.The Wisdom of the East series initiated by Launcelot Cranmer-Byng（1872-1945）in a convenient format that has kept many of its volumes in print through the publisher John Murray for much of the twentieth century，dates back to the first decade of the century.For a version of Confucius highlighting most of his wisdom without baffling the English reader too much the series editor turned to Lionel Giles（1873-1958），son of the Cambridge professor of Chinese，Herbert Giles（1845-1935），who duly turned in a small book of translations from the Analects，arranged thematically rather than in the conventional order，in 1907.[9]It may be remarked in passing that such attempts at helping Confucius to express himself by reordering his thoughts set something of a precedent for many later translators and anthologists.[10]Perhaps this reordering helped to keep John Murray busy reprinting this version of the Analects from time to time until after the Second World War.But it also seems to have attracted attention from another quarter.
In 1933 the Limited Editions Club，a business based on a publishing philosophy quite different from that which inspired either the World's Classics or the Wisdom of the East series，included the Lionel Giles translation as the forty-second of its titles，in the fourth series of its issues.The Club was founded in 1929 by George Macy（1900-1956），and never produced more than one thousand five hundred copies of any of its editions.[11]For its luxury version of the English Analects the Club resorted to the Commercial Press of Shanghai，who—without mentioning the John Murray original in any way—reproduced for the most part the contents of the 1907 work reincarnated in traditional Chinese threaded binding，complete with a wooden box as a cover，bearing the title in English and Chinese.Within the work itself no use seems to have been made of the opportunity to use Chinese characters，so the reasons for resorting to the Commercial Press，if not connected to copyright questions，seems mainly to have been prompted by a somewhat whimsical desire to produce a China-related title in a Chinese format.Giles does however seem to have taken this opportunity to extend the scope of his translation and to add some other useful features to his earlier work.[12]
Nothing stranger，surely，has happened to an English version of Confucius in the twentieth century.But we cannot even so be sure that nothing stranger will ever happen to a twentieth century English translation of the Analects，since we cannot be sure that the story of these translations has reached an end.The achievements of Lionel Giles，indeed，form a case in point.One would imagine that his scholarship would be by now well past its sell-by date，especially since he was the product not of a modern university education in Chinese Studies but of the amateur，largely self-taught period in British sinology that started before university degrees in Chinese were ever contemplated.Even so，his work has attracted the warmest praise from John Minford in the context of the Australia-based movement to reassess our studies of China known as the‘New Sinology’.[13]Admittedly this reassessment is primarily designed to introduce to a new readership his translation of Sunzi，which is somewhat more carefully wrought than his digest of the Analects for a popular and easily affordable series，but the assessment he gives in his introduction of James Legge's approach to Confucius is never the less quoted by Minford with full approval.Is it possible that Lionel Giles on the Analects will be read with close attention again in the twenty-first century，leading to dusty copies of the John Murray volume，or even of the Commercial Press edition，being retrieved from library shelves once more？
Stranger things have happened on this score，too，to twentieth century translators of Confucius into English，as may be seen from my final example.It is one of the most striking paradoxes of Analects translation during this period that the most famous reader and translator to use English，Ezra Pound（1885-1972），has been least widely appreciated.This is not in one sense surprising，since Pound's reading knowledge of Chinese developed over the years that he mulled over the sayings of Confucius from complete ignorance to a no better than rudimentary knowledge supported by a notoriously unhelpful dictionary，further complicated by notions concerning the Chinese script that have been entirely rejected by modern scholarship.Even more alarmingly，his British publisher，Peter Owen，has recently revealed in some reminiscences recorded in interview that when he first had dealings with the great man，he was“in the nuthouse”.[14]It would be wrong however to deduce from this that Pound's work is in any normal sense irrational，since as Peter Owen at least was well aware，the reasons for Pound's detention at the end of the Second World War were not straightforward：in fact，contemporary evidence suggests that he was saner about Confucianism than just about anything else at this point in his life.[15]
In any case，the edition of the Analects put out by Peter Owen was the outcome of a long process，which had first seen published results as early as 1937 in Italy，at which stage Pound was working mainly with a copy of Legge's bilingual text，but which after his return to America involved him also in using a 1947 issue of R.H.Mathews，Mathew's Chinese-English Dictionary，for the versions of Confucius published in that country from 1950 onwards.[16]The Owens edition of 1956 follows the latest American edition before that year in acknowledging Pound's use of this work by printing an additional note by Pound，not present in 1950.This note reveals that he checked his understanding not only against Legge（who is mentioned somewhat obliquely）but also against a French translation of 1840；otherwise Mathews is listed as a reference along with Ernest Fenellosa，The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry，which Pound had edited and published in 1936，and a couple of other works.[17]While Mathews did a reasonable job for his day，considering the first edition appeared in 1931，when written Chinese was in transition from the pre-modern literary style to a more vernacular standard，it is a profoundly misleading jumble of ancient and modern meanings，and one can understand just why a past Professor of Chinese at Oxford University once seized a copy from a student and threw it out of the window.[18]Fenellosa（1858-1908）as presented by Pound also embodies a great deal of wrong-headedness about the Chinese script，as many others have already remarked—though a reprinting of his edition that appeared in America bears on its cover the spirited response“Whether or not Pound proceeded on false premises remains an academic question.Let the pedants rave”—an invitation it is very difficult to resist.[19]
And yet，despite all this，one of Europe's leading sinologists and a great authority especially on humour in the Analects，Christoph Harbsmeier，in reviewing a Norwegian translation of Confucius points out that occasionally Pound is—albeit accidentally—philologically more precise even than the scrupulous D.C.Lau.He refers to Pound's version as a‘literary masterpiece’and commends in particular the appropriateness of its‘edgy，uncompromising prose’for the‘intellectual excitement and the abrupt poetry of Confucian diction’.[20]Might it not be that in the unfolding story of the Analects in English，the comparatively neglected rendering by Ezra Pound could still have a part to play？
We cannot know for sure，and guessing the direction trends will take is，to repeat，no part of the exercise I am concerned with here.I am conscious，for example，that I have concentrated for obvious reasons very much on translations connected with the United Kingdom，whereas one day we may well find that the most important translation of Confucius is one produced for the benefit of persons of Chinese heritage familiar with the English language by members of the same widespread community.[21]All I hope to have demonstrated by the foregoing discussion is merely that the notion of a steady，ordered sequence of gradually more accurate and readable translations that one might lazily tend to assume characterises the history in English of any famous foreign language text is no more exemplified by the Analects than by anything else.Even within a period of time during which written English style has not changed all that much，other factors have governed not simply the appearance but also the reappearance of different readings of Confucius.The examples I have given most obviously relate largely to commercial considerations within a modern print culture，though the tendency of scholars to recognise the merits of translators of earlier times when they have neither personal nor commercial grounds for recommending them is also in evidence here，I believe.Sinologists，it seems，cannot but develop a certain sense of a continuous tradition.
For，to come back to my initial statement of the problem，it is the simultaneous elasticity and coherence across both cultural space and cultural time of the Chinese tradition that marks it out from anything in the experience of most users of English.By cultural time I refer to the basic paradigms that are used to construe human history.The parody of China that developed in nineteenth century Western thought in order to construct new visions of exceptional Western modernity was of an immobile tradition，of eternal intellectual standstill.But it is clear that whatever patterns were read into the Chinese past in China itself，it was never seen as static or even monolithic.The problem was always to identify the unifying thread of continuity，of articulating coherence.This allowed for a constant process of reassessment，of the re-reading of texts such as the Analects，and of the revival of interpretations once discarded.I can understand why the notion of a renaissance，for so long（though not perhaps originally）deemed a Western monopoly，should now once more be extended to other places such as China also.[22]But it seems to me that a renaissance requires that a tradition should become somehow estranged from itself，and that does not seem quite to have happened in China，despite some very dark moments.Instead，a much more diffuse and more continuous process of rediscovery appears to have operated albeit one naturally affected by overall historical circumstances，so that the intensity of the phenomenon might wax and wane，or vary in scope.[23]
I am not sure if this very different quality of civilisation over time can be readily conveyed in English.It maybe that to appreciate the possibilities of such a span of culture one has to be able to read Classical Chinese and to dip in and out of the tradition over different centuries like educated East Asians of former times were able to do.But at least the foregoing discussion of the Analects in English has allowed me to indicate where the problem lies.Successfully solving the problem of how to educate the British and others about the facets of the Chinese historical experience that are quite unfamiliar to us is doubtless not something that can be achieved in half an hour.But someone somewhere had better start work on that project soon.Perhaps here will turn out to be the place.
[1] Please see Xinzhong Yao's Wisdom in Early Confucian and Israelite Traditions（Aldershot：Ashgate，2006），which would be a fine example of the sort of work that is possible in this field.
[2] Notably John Makeham，Transmitters and Creators：Chinese Commentators and Commentary on the Analects（Cambridge，MA：Harvard University Press，2003），though this very useful work does not aim to be comprehensive.
[3] Raymond Dawson，The Analects（Oxford：Oxford University Press，1993），p.xxxiii，commends the same three predecessors that I have selected.
[4] A good example is James Legge，selected and edited by Peg Streep，with watercolours by Claudia Karabaic Sargent，Confucius：The Wisdom（Boston，New York Toronto and London：Bullfinch Press，1995），the jacket of which bears the helpful notation for the potential purchaser‘A Spiritual Classic’and，for the bookseller，‘Inspiration/Gift’.
[5] As witness，for example，Dorothy Eagle，ed.，The Concise Dictionary of English Literature，second ed.，（Oxford：Oxford University Press，1970），p.603.Waley's Analects has，of course，been reprinted on occasion，e.g.by Vintage Books，New York，in 1961；it was also translated into Dutch in 1946：cf.Francis A，Johns，A Bibliography of Arthur Waley，Revised and Expanded edition（London：The Athone Press，1988），pp.52-3.
[6] Two obituaries by native speakers of English that testify eloquently to Lau's precision in matters of translation，by Hugh Baker and Roger Ames，may be found in the Journal of Chinese Studies 51（July，2010），pp.12-18.
[7] According to the bibliography by Joel Sahleen in Bryan W.Van Norden，Confucius and the Analects：New Essays（Oxford：Oxford University Press，2002），p.213，Soothill's translation was republished by Dover in Mineola，NY，in 1995，but I have not seen this reprint.Sahleen's bibliography，which runs to eighteen pages，lists inter alia most of the new translations of the late twentieth century，often with references to relevant book reviews also.For useful discussions of Analects translation，see the articles listed here by Durrant，Eoyang，Leslie and Taam；Anne Cheng also has an important survey in Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie，n.s.XVII，（1999），pp.471-479，that Sahleen does not include.
[8] I have consulted this work，William Edward Soothill，The Analects，or The Conversations of Confucius with his Disciples and Certain Others（London：Oxford University Press，1937）in a printing of 1958 that lists six other printings up to that point since the first Oxford edition.
[9] Lionel Giles，The Sayings of Confucius；A New Translation of the Greater Part of the Confucian Analects（London：John Murray，1907），pp.10-13，20-36，as John Minford（see below）recognises，takes to task Victorian translators（including Legge）more for their inaccurate comparisons of Confucianism and Christianity than on literary or philological grounds，but this in itself marked a major step forward in British Analects scholarship.
[10] Apart from the editor of Legge mentioned above，one might mention Thomas Cleary，The Essential Confucius：The Heart of Confucius’Teachings in Authentic I Ching Order（New York：HarperCollins，1992）；I am not sure what‘authentic’means in this context.It cannot be denied that some reordering illustrating the different layers of material in the Analects would be helpful，but one fears that universal or even substantial agreement on the sort of analysis boldly demonstrated by E.Bruce and Taeko Brooks，The Original Analects（New York：Columbia University Press，1998），may take some time to emerge.
[11] This information derives from http：//www.majure.net/lechistory.htm，accessed 28 September 2010，Bill R.Majure，“A Brief History of the Limited Editions Club”，which cites a number of sources.
[12] The title page to this edition，Lionel Giles，The Analects of Confucius（Shanghai：Printed for Members of the Limited Editions Club by the Commercial Press，1933）removes the information，given in the original edition from John Murray，that the translation is only partial，and though I have not checked systematically，it may well be that the various added sayings incorporated by Giles into this version amount to a complete coverage of the original text.The title page is，moreover，followed by four illustrations：of Confucius，of two views of his temple，and of his tomb.The repagination of the original material has resulted in changes all the footnotes cross-referencing to other pages of the book，and Giles as a result seems to have used the opportunity to expand the number of the footnotes also.Very helpful marginal indications of the sources of the sayings by‘chapter and verse’within the Analects are added throughout.
[13] http：//www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php？searchterm=013_giles.inc&issue=013，accessed 28 September，2010：John Minford，“Lionel Giles：Sinology，Old and New”，China Heritage Quarterly 13，March，2008.
[14] http：//www.3ammagazine.com/3am/blazing-the-trail-an-interview-with-peter-owen/，accessed 28th September 2010：Steven Fowler，“Blazing the Trail：An interview with Peter Owen”，3：AM Magazine，Tuesday，November 24th，2009.
[15] See the summary of his state of mind by Wendy Stallart Flory，on p.149 of her study“Confucius Against Confusion：Ezra Pound and the Catholic Chaplain at Pisa”，in Zhaoming Qian，ed.，Ezra Pound and China（Ann Arbor：University of Michigan Press，2003），pp.145-162.
[16] R.H.Mathews，Mathew's Chinese-English Dictionary（Cambridge，MA：Harvard University Press，1943），as its preface makes clear，is but a somewhat revised and augmented version of a book that first appeared from a Chinese missionary press in 1931.For some information as to the sources used by Pound，see Flory，“Confucius Against Confusion”，pp.152-153.
[17] See Ezra Pound，Confucian Analects（London：Peter Owen，1956），pp.5-6.The French translator is named as‘Pauthier’，i.e，Pierre-Guillaume Pauthier（1801-1873），for the first edition of whose Analects see John Lust，Western Books on China published up to 1850（London：Bamboo Books，1987），p.175，but I do not know what edition of Pauthier's translation Pound was using.
[18] The scholar concerned was not，to be clear，a professor at Oxford at the time.I did not witness this event，but I did once meet the owner of the dictionary，who confirmed the veracity of the anecdote.
[19] For a good and entirely temperate recent summary that allows the reader to go on to explore the wider context of the ideas involved，see Haun Saussy，Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China（Cambridge，MA：Harvard University Press，2001），pp.38-44.My quotation is from the edition consulted by Saussy，namely Ernest Fenellosa，ed.Ezra Pound，The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry，（San Francisco：City Light Books，1964），where the two sentences may be found on the back cover，together with a reference to the ridicule of sinologists such as George Kennedy，who is quoted as characterising the essay as“a small mass of confusion”.
[20] See his remarks in of Copenhagen Papers in East and Southeast Asian Studies 6（1991），p.114.He also refers to a comparison between Pound and Lau made by Stephen Durrant（cf.n.7 above）；Eugene Eoyang also compares Waley and Pound，so it would be unfair to describe Pound as completely neglected by sinologists.
[21] I have in mind John B.Khu，Vicente B.K.Khu，William B.S.Khu and Jose B.K.Khu，The Confucian Bible，Book 1：Analects（Manila：Granhill Corporation，1991），a bilingual work including the original text and modern Chinese translation as well as English，collectively produced by a far-flung family based in the Philippines，that bears on its cover the alluring legend“What those with Chinese ties need to know but dare not ask！”（sic）.
[22] Thus Jack Goody，Renaissances：The One or the Many ？（Cambridge：Cambridge University Press，2010），though in hesitating to ascribe a full measure of originality to him，I am bearing in mind that Oliver Goldsmith，in The Citizen of the World，Letter LXIII，writes“all mankind seemed to sleep，till nature gave the general call”and“in the year of the Christian era，1400，the Emperor Yonglo arose to revive the learning of the East；while about the same time in Italy the Medicean family laboured in Italy to raise infant genius from the cradle”—the whole passage deserves more extended discussion.
[23] This I have argued in“China and the Redundancy of the Medieval”，The Medieval History Journal，1.1（1998），pp.73-89.