Translation Goes Both Ways

Translation is often thought to be a one-way operation of transfer of content whereby information that exists in language A is reproduced using the words of language B. But that account is too simple. The way that a text of language A is recreated in language B may reverberate within language A and change the meaning of that text for its original public. Framing and genre, while not properly part of a text, nonetheless decide a great deal about how the text is understood, and translators often get to decide framing and genre. The example analyzed here is Confucius Sinarum philosophus, a Latin translation of three of the Four Books, published in Paris in 1687. The translated work's content interacts with the framing and occasion of the translation: The translators wished to offer the Analects as a gift to the French king but, to do so, had to mute Confucius's criticism of autocratic rulers. They thereby obscured a characteristic — indeed, essential — feature of Chinese political discourse: the remonstrance.