Confucian Translation Problems and a Phenomenological Solution

Abstract

Traditional Chinese Confucian ideas, such as such as Tian(天), Dao(道), and Ren(仁) , generally run counter to Western theoretical expectations, and are difficult to express in correspondence with Western philosophy. It is really surprising to find that, for a long time, they were loosely and smoothly translated by uniform translation (or word-for-word translation). As a result, the story of Confucian thought is concealed or distorted in Western concepts and discourse structures. The paper applies phenomenology to the question of Confucian translations. It explicitly embraces a new framework of translation, the goal of which is to engage us to rethink the unsayable of Confucianism, question the sayable we take for granted, and better promote the understanding of Confucianism in the West.