TITLE:
On the Chinese Translations of The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School from the Perspective of Paratext
AUTHORS:
Wenjing Wang, Jinyu Liu
KEYWORDS:
The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School, Chen Huan-Chang, Paratexts, Chinese Translations
JOURNAL NAME:
Chinese Studies,
Vol.12 No.1,
January
9,
2023
ABSTRACT: As the first work on ancient Chinese economic thought overseas written by
a Chinese, The Economic Principles of
Confucius and His School attracted huge attention of Western researchers, however the studies of the
content and opinions on this work at home are not expanded until the late 20th
century, which mainly concentrated in the field of economics and philosophy.
Since the publication of three Chinese
translations in 2009 and 2010, this work gradually come into public
readers’ scope, but there are few researches study from the perspective of
translation studies. This paper will take
three different translators’ first Chinese versions as the case study to
compare the paratext in each translation. Paratexts, acting as the mediator
between the text and readers, explains cultural values and reveals the
translators’ translation ideas and strategies. This study aims to describe and
analyse the paratext of translation products and explore the reason behind it,
in order to provide references for the transmission and communication of texts
on social sciences.