Studies Of Western Sinologists' Motives For Translating Chinese Classics

Sinology,or the study of Chinese language,history,philosophy,customs and politics,has been around for several hundred years.And western sinologists have been a major force in the translation of canonical Chinese works.Their translations,as an important channel for foreign readers to learn about China,have played a significant role in spreading Chinese culture.Since the end of the Ming dynasty,western missionaries coming to China ran many academic journals as platforms for scholarly writings on China,including The Chinese Repository,The China Review or Notes and Queries on the Far East,East of Asia Magazine,The Indo-Chinese Gleaner,among others.Myriad translations of Chinese classics were published in those journals,covering every field from classic novels,history to geography and philosophy.These journals are,with no doubt,essential platforms in exporting Chinese culture and play a main part in shaping China's image in westerners' eyes.That being said,with their contributions also comes the problem.Approaching and rendering Chinese classics out of various motives,those western sinologists tend to have limited knowledge of China and consequently misinterpret Chinese culture,which hinders them from having an in-depth study of China.The result is that they have not presented Chinese culture to the world as it is and have not done justice to Chinese culture,which is yet to gain the status that it deserves.At present,Chinese culture has not been greeted with the response expected in the English-speaking countries,with Chinese classics in translation receiving a lukewarm response.As is mentioned above,western sinologists is a major force in rendering classical Chinese works.So examining their translations of Chinese classics may help to find a way out and go a long way towards solving the problem.Therefore,the author has an analysis of western sinologists' translations of canonical Chinese works published in The China Review and the new translation of The Analects of Confucius.The author,through these translations,then zooms in on their motives for translating Chinese classics.Besides,as there is a stark contrast between the predicament we are now in in spreading Chinese culture and the 18th-century “China craze” in France,the author makes an attempt to explore the reasons for the two different reactions with which Chinese classics are received abroad.In doing so,the paper aims to set forth the right attitude those foreign sinologists should take while translating Chinese works,with a view to making Chinese classics reach a wider foreign audience who hopefully read those Chinese texts with great admiration and appetite.