What Confucius Really Said

Book excerpt: The Analects of Confucius is a compendium of lively banter and engaging exchanges between Confucius and his contemporaries, one that touches upon culture, fashion, arts, and society, making fun of celebrities and political figures of the day with juicy quotes from bestselling books as well as popular lyrics from the most widely-circulated songs, all of which, unfortunately, is lost on the modern reader — lost in translations that, out of good scholarly intention, seek to faithfully preserve historical reference. Not in this version of the Analects however, which translates not only language but also culture. In the world’s first skopos-oriented translation of the Confucian Analects, the distractions of history and culture are sidestepped by teleporting Confucius into modern society and allowing him to speak in a contemporary American idiom: where he quotes from the masterworks of his day, classical passages from the Western canon are reproduced; where he sings from popular songs, lines from the Anglo-American lyrical repertoire are appropriated for effect. Politicians of antiquity are replaced with their doppelgangers from the American political landscape; Chinese dynasties are swapped for the empires of Greece and Rome. The result is a work of equivalent effect, through which the rhetorical force and conversational style of Confucius becomes evident, allowing the ideas of Confucius the man to shine through.