Confucius as a Religious Figure in Ku Hung-Ming's Translation of the Lunyu (Analects)

Abstract

Confucius's religiosity has been a point of contestation since Confucian classics were introduced to the West through translation, and different translators have portrayed Confucius differently as far as religiosity is concerned. Ku Hung-Ming 辜鴻銘 (pinyin: Gu Hongming, 1857–1928) was the first Chinese translator of Confucian classics when he translated the Lunyu into English in 1898, breaking the long-time monopoly of translations of Confucian classics by Western missionaries. This article focuses on Confucius's religiosity in Ku's translated Lunyu and demonstrates that the translation portrays Confucius as religious, rendering unwarranted the argument in the current literature that Ku's translated Lunyu offers a secular Confucius. This article also has important methodological implications in that it challenges the effectiveness of culture-specific-items (CSI) analysis as an approach to culturally loaded texts. It emphasizes that every translational choice, including the use of paratexts, should be taken seriously when attempting to make a generalization for a translated text.