The Analects (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

This was the first translation of the Analects that I read. It has faults, but so too does every other translation, and there is no translation that reads more delightfully than this one does; Dawson may be the only really elegant writer of prose to have undertaken an Analects translation. Dawson's besetting sin is a flood of conjunctions and transitions which have no root in the original. Take the following for example:

"The wise delight in water, but the humane delight in mountains. For although the wise are active, the humane are at rest. And although the wise will find joy, the humane will have long life." Here the words "but" "for although" and "and although" are purely Dawson's creation: there is nothing correspoinding to them in the original.

But if this is the worst sin a translator has, we may breathe freely. Lau similarly--in fact to a far worse degree-overlards his translations with verbiage, and he cannot plead the excuse of elegance. Let's compare them. Here is Lau:

"A man is worthy of being a teacher who gets to know what is new by keeping fresh in his mind what he is already familiar with." 27

Would anyone reading that sentence remember it as something inspiring or exciting? And why can Lau not refrain from all the useless padding?

Here is Leys:

"He who by revising the old gets to know the new is fit to be a teacher." 17

A bit better--we don't quite fall alseep here at least--but "revise" is cold and, as we shall see, a strange choice.

And now Dawson:

"If by keeping the old warm one can provide understanding of the new, one is fit to be a teacher." 20

Is there a comparison? I can remember how exciting I found those words the first time I read them! The original has a concision of which English is incapable: "Warm old and know new, can be teacher indeed" would be a word-for-word attempt. Ten words--to Leys' 17, Dawson's 20, and Lau's (typically egregious) 27. "Know new" could mean either the man himself knowing the new, or providing such knowledge to others, or both; classical Chinese admits of these ambiguities, and it gets to the point where ambiguity becomes greater precision, as the knowledge here can be conceived of as communal and indivisible. Dawson has taken a few liberties; we could probably not justify "provide understanding" from a strict analysis of the original, although even here a defence could be mounted, for the Chinese word "knowledge" or "know" includes the sense of wisdom as well. But "keep warm" keeps the "warm" in the sentence, which neither Lau nor Leys seems interested in. Yet it is important! The soul of the Analects is alive in this translation as it is not in the others.

This book is not equipped with much in the way of scholarly or philological notes, but there are enough notes to clear up the obvious problems. I would strongly recommend this as a first Analects; it's better simply to enjoy and mull over the words themselves without getting caught up in the web of secondary concerns that heavily annotated books tend to drift into. The only really good translation is five or six translations read side by side, for comparison, along with the original, but starting with this one would be the most enjoyable way to get into the world of Confucius.

Before purchasing this book, one needs to ask themselves why they want it. If you are purchasing this book to perform a comparitive review on the contextual issues involved with the translation of ancient Chinese for the modern scholar, you will likely be disappointed.

However, if you are simply trying to familiarize yourself with an ancient philosophy of the Far East, this book will do nicely. If you are able to focus on the ideas rather than the grammar, you will be pleased. This book contains a wealth of common sense virtues and would be an absolute "must" for an aspiring political scientist, as it contains a healthy dose of political savvy.

Finally, the reader must keep in mind while reading this that Confucianism did not take hold for many years after Master Kong's death. Such is the way of all wisdom.