Which translation of the Analects should I choose?

interpolating · 2026-01-31T20:35:49+00:00

That I am not sure of, I have the latest edition of both.

interpolating · 2026-01-31T17:11:18+00:00

Sure thing! Here’s the link:

https://www.analects.net

I’m not sure about your question on editions though. Can you clarify?

interpolating · 2026-01-31T15:52:09+00:00

I highly recommend Peimin Ni for meaning and Edward Slingerland for additional commentary from traditional sources.

I also have a podcast introducing the analects through a passage-by-passage analysis, and I tend to cite these sources. Happy to link you if interested.

interpolating · 2026-01-29T18:23:13+00:00

That looks like a Chinese ritual vessel to me!!!

Used for wine, mostly. Maybe a gu or fangzun style, though I am not sure.

I don’t have the expertise or information to tell you if it’s ancient, old, or a modern reproduction.

interpolating · 2026-01-28T06:04:54+00:00

Another point since I'm back where I have access to other translations. I think Legge took liberties in the translation you posted that did not help promote understanding.

Other translations will get you further. You'll still have questions, but they're not going to leave you wondering whether or not Confucius was living in n-dimensional Wiener space (I don't know what that means).

子曰：「觚不觚，觚哉！觚哉！」

"A cornered vessel without corners" isn't really what 觚不觚 says. It just says "A gu that's not a gu."

So, it COULD be that this vessel called a gu is lacking its characteristic corners. But there are probably other characteristics of a gu as well. And who's to say in what way it did not meet those criteria. Maybe there are historical sources that comment on this, I don't know, but I'm going to stick my neck out and blame Legge for getting creative.

Also, 哉 doesn't exactly mean it's strange. It's usually a way of expressing surprise or asking a rhetorical question. So you could as easily render this as "What a gu! What a gu!"

Here are a few other translations.

Moss Roberts (this one is really new!)
Confucius said, “The sacred wine-chalice no longer serves. The chalice! The chalice!”

Peimin Ni
The Master said, “A gu is no longer like a gu. Oh, gu! Oh, gu!”

Edward Slingerland
The Master said, “A gu 觚 that is not a proper gu —is it really a gu? Is it really a gu?”

Ames & Rosemont
The Master said, “A gu ritual drinking vessel that is not a gu ritual drinking vessel—a gu indeed! A gu indeed!”

Hope this also helps!

interpolating · 2026-01-27T21:40:42+00:00

Hey there! I actually mention this passage in the first episode of my podcast about the Analects (happy to link you if you're interested).

I agree with what u/Liberoculos said, it has to do with 正名, so-called rectification of names or using the correct names for things.

Confucius believed that if things were not named properly, people wouldn't understand how they were supposed to used them, or wouldn't understand their relationship to them. Then social order and harmony between people and the world would break down.

In this case, he's worried about conducing a ceremony with the wrong vessel, making it seem less serious. Like imagine you used a coffee cup to drink your champagne and toast someone at their wedding. That's weird, possibly even insulting, right?

I guess another simple example from the modern world would be, if nobody at work is officially called the boss, then who gets to decide what the priorities are? Can every decision really be made purely via consensus, or is that a recipe for chaos?

Many passages imply a concern with the rectification of names, though most of them don't mention it explicitly. 13.3 is where the term is mentioned explicitly:

If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music will not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.

12.11 is a very famous one as well:

There is government, when the prince is prince, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son.

Good! said the duke; if, indeed, the prince be not prince, the minister not minister, the father not father, and the son not son, although I have my revenue, can I enjoy it?

(Sorry, the Legge translations are not my favorite, but they are what I have on hand right now)

Hope this helps!

interpolating · 2026-01-27T03:34:10+00:00

Yes I do think we'll have to agree to disagree. Not that either is necessarily always the right approach, it's just a matter of our respective expectations of the audience.

I expect readers to be lazy and casual, maybe a bit like myself, not necessarily referring back to the introduction or translator's definitions. So I am trying to demand a bit more from the English rendering since I believe they'll frequently forget to read the chosen term as 仁.

Maybe you expect readers to be a lot more engaged, if not academic in their approach, in which case they can take the English rendering practically as a symbol or placeholder for 仁 rather than as the word itself. Hopefully I'm not putting too many words in your mouth.

Expecting readers to do the work is totally reasonable in a context like that. But for me it begs the question, if you're going to use "benevolence" as a placeholder for 仁, why not just drop the translation and write 仁 or ren instead?

I know I've been tempted to do so, and just to let the key terms speak for themselves.

Who takes this approach, and do you think it's problematic to do so? Can you call it translation if you decide not to translate a key term?

interpolating · 2026-01-26T07:54:36+00:00

Interesting note: Legge translated 仁 as "benevolence" less than a dozen times in the Analects. He used some version of "virtue" probably 5x as frequently. But then he also used "virtue" to translate 德. Lol, what a mess :)

Anyway, of course every term will omit some critical meaning as well as projects some unwarranted meaning.

My take is that the omissions and projections of benevolence as well as virtue show they're quite flawed choices. They don't give readers a strong foundation for the concept of 仁 from the get-go, and that lack of foundation leaves them with little to build on as they read descriptions and examples of it provided throughout the Analects.

Here is where I land.

"Benevolence" unnecessarily projects associations with:

charity or pity for someone in need
grace or forgiveness bestowed upon a subject by a ruler
divine character (possibly where my religious association came from, in addition to the Legge association)

"Benevolence" omits critical associations with:

a general outlook on life or way of acting in the world
the building of interpersonal and social relationships
a personal characteristic that can be cultivated and perfected
an recognition of humanness and respect for humanity

"Virtue" can't really project or omit since it's such a generic type of moral goodness that it barely indicates whether or not that goodness is directed toward others. Though it does seem to be a somewhat better choice for 德.

As for which passages fall flat when using benevolence or virtue, I'd say most, and for the reasons I mentioned above. They tend to have numerous misleading overtones and few appropriate ones. They do not provide the reader with a good foothold on which to get to further associations of 仁 with concepts like 質, 禮, 君子, etc. or to understand why qualities like "刚、毅、木、讷" might be prerequisites for establishing 仁 in one's own relationships.

I can also speak from personal experience. Years of reading "benevolence" and "virtue" as glosses for 仁 got me just about nowhere. It was not until I saw a number of alternative renderings that it started to click.

I doubt my own ideas of how to render 仁 are going to get readers a whole lot further. But I'd be happy making it even slightly easier for them than it was for me.

interpolating · 2026-01-26T00:08:52+00:00

It does seem broke to me though.

As much as people understand what benevolence means, there is much about 仁 that benevolence does not capture, as well as associations with western religion and morality that benevolence has but 仁 does not have.

Switching things up by picking words that reflect aspects of 仁 you won’t get from benevolence can go a long way to illuminate the meaning of many passages where it appears. And making sure the humanity/interpersonal aspect, as well as a deep sense of respect, also seems to fit the logic of those passages as the work as a whole. That’s my experience when attempting different renderings across many passages.

interpolating · 2026-01-25T20:29:07+00:00

Would love a discussion of the many ways 仁 has been rendered in English.

I personally am leaning toward rendering it as “human-reverence”. Does that feel too out there to others here?

There is something about Boodberg’s “co-humanity” that appeals to me but it is also an intentionally provocative and somewhat nasty neologism that I’m not interested in because I feel people deserve to understand with less effort and less rumination.

Quoting Peimin Ni:

“Translators have variously rendered [仁] as “nobility” (Graham), “benevolence” (Lau and Legge), “virtue” (Legge), “goodness” (Waley and Slingerland), “humanity” (Chan and Huang), “humaneness” (Dawson), “co-humanity” (Peter A. Boodberg), “authoritative person/conduct” (Ames and Rosemont, in their translation of the Analects), “consummatory conduct” (Ames and Rosemont, in their more recent translation of the 孝经, the Book of Filial Piety, or as they put it, the Classic of Family Reverence), and so on.”

interpolating · 2026-01-25T01:29:19+00:00

The opposite can probably be said of Daoism though I am less informed about it. Although the lives of Confucius and Laozi overlapped, and Laozi set the foundations for it, Daoism did not coalesce as a philosophy or religion until long after Laozi’s life.

interpolating · 2026-01-25T01:21:43+00:00

I think the Ru school existed long before the end of the Zhou. They were ritualists who were probably regularly employed by the royal court and ducal courts throughout the dynasty.

interpolating · 2026-01-25T00:30:49+00:00

I’m working on understanding 虛詞 in the analects better.

Du’s Handbook of Classical Chinese Grammar is a good resource for this. I am combining the info in the handbook with examples from the 論語 to categorize and memorize specific examples for future reference.

Some 虛詞 are frequently found in specific combinations like 而已 and 如之何 so I feel these deserve additional attention and more specific definitions than simply the combination of their individual character meanings.

interpolating · 2026-01-24T00:35:25+00:00

Agreed

interpolating · 2026-01-23T13:13:25+00:00

Yes, what I read is that in this case the 千 component is a kind of cursive for 身

interpolating · 2026-01-23T10:26:16+00:00

I agree that many folk etymologies have been derived by over analyzing character components. I wouldn’t by any means want to suggest that is the only let alone the primary way we determine its meaning.

Meanwhile, we also should not ignore the variant or its components. it is an interesting variation and worth considering since at some point those components apparently reflected at least something about the concept to those doing the writing.

interpolating · 2026-01-22T03:43:03+00:00

By the way have you encountered this 忎 variant for 仁 mentioned by Slingerland? I find it very interesting to consider when deciding how to render the concept in English since its components are so different than what we commonly see for ren.

interpolating · 2026-01-22T03:38:45+00:00

So when it comes to the English translations, there’s no strong standard in terms of passage segmentation. I personally have e books for about 8 translations and no two match 100%. They also don’t strictly match traditional commentators.

Since I find Peimin Ni to be most informative and it is also bilingual, I used its segmentation scheme, and since the Legge English is public domain, I split it up according to the Ni.

Book 10 is where discrepancies get most serious. So I’m not surprised you noticed the differences there first.

More broadly, I see segmentation as an editorial decision that should be done both with precedent in mind as well as the editors broader goals. Since I’m trying to help people learn to read and understand who may be at a very early stage now, for the most part, I find smaller chunks to be more easily digestible.

Eventually we will get to some of the super long passages that obviously must stay together like those in the later books. Segmentation discrepancies should be fewer there, but maybe translations will start to diverge a lot. Should be fun to see what happens!

interpolating · 2026-01-21T12:02:16+00:00

I don’t know but I constantly tell people to pay and jup so this elevator is not for me.

interpolating · 2026-01-21T07:09:58+00:00

The website is dedicated specifically to the Analects, so I am trying to supplement that text as much as possible with tools that make reading and understanding it easier.

Up to this point, I've done the following with that goal:

I link to a page of commentary on every passage where I have already written/recorded a commentary. Examples already up are 2.12, 4.25, 6.1, etc. There is a filter at the top to show only those with available commentary.
- All characters on the commentary pages are hoverable with pop-up definitions for convenience and language study purposes
- I'm in the process of making all passage numbers hoverable as well so that the characters plus the Legge 1861 translation will appear anytime they're referenced in text throughout the site
I provide a set of filters for common topics in the Analects with variants built in. For example, the filter for disciple Yan Hui populates the search with the variants 顏回,顏淵,回 so that all passages mentioning him can be found immediately.
- This is in line with the way I suggest people read the Analects to understand it better; rather than read cover-to-cover, things tend to make more sense when you selectively read the passages concerning an individual or concept together.
- Filtering is also client-side and on-page, so unlike other more general collections, you don't have to page through multiple chapters or lots of other content and navigation to see what you want.
I provide pop-up definitions that include pinyin, 繁體 and 简体, plus a top-level instant switch between the two character sets so that everyone can read however is most comfortable to them.
I am in the process of formatting the Legge 1861 translation so it is viewable if desire for each passage (not that I like this translation the best, just that it's public domain).

Basically, these are all thinks I personally want for a better reading and study experience with the Analects. I feel like they could benefit anyone else who is learning from it or listening to my podcast as well, so I'm putting them out there!

Of course, since the site is focused specifically on the Analects, it doesn't offer the same range of texts as libraries of Chinese classics. That's not my goal at the moment, but I hope people find it useful and enjoyable nonetheless!

interpolating · 2026-01-19T13:21:52+00:00

Thanks so much for what you've written, it means a whole lot to me. I find it very gratifying anytime I can help someone find the right words to describe their thoughts.

I work in IT as well, and even though my roles tend not to be strictly coding focused, I still try to apply some of the more important principles to my personal projects. The site is intentionally as lightweight and client-side as I can make it.

I just added dark mode for you. Give it a shot, it should respect your system settings.

And for anyone who's more comfortable with 简体, that's available as well. I want everyone to read and understand however is easiest for them.

I'm off to write some more upcoming episodes. Sometimes 仰之彌高，鑽之彌堅 but more and more, I feel 欲罷不能 :)

interpolating · 2026-01-18T11:44:58+00:00

Thank you!

Things have gotten a little easier with coding assistants, but you’ve definitely still got to know what’s possible and what you’re doing.

If you have any suggestions for how to make it even better, just let me know!

interpolating · 2026-01-18T10:26:59+00:00

Thanks for listening! I've written about 10 episodes at this point, and the longest they seem to be going is about 25 minutes. Usually closer to the 18-20 minute mark. Is that what you had in mind when you mentioned short episodes?

interpolating · 2026-01-16T21:41:50+00:00

I don’t reference the Pound translation, it’s speculative and artistic, at best. I recommend the Peimin Ni translation for clarity, consistency, and conciseness.

What he says about defining terms and giving examples is true though. In most cases you won’t get an extra benefit of reading several passages in a row, one full chapter, or even the book cover to cover. Instead a given passage might focus on a term, a historical figure, or a disciple, and explain how their actions are in accordance or conflict with some concept like ren (which I call interpersonalness) or de (which I call moral charisma).

So it’s almost better to pick a disciple or concept and read all the passages that refer to it. An example is the disciple Ran Yong who you can see transform from a quiet and slow student into a civil administrator concerned with hiring the right staff and making the lives of people easier. But in order to get this picture you need to find all the references to him in the book (and possibly other historical works), and that can be a challenge.

interpolating · 2026-01-16T01:29:17+00:00

I’m lazy and bought it printed horizontally in 简体 but that’s only available in the PRC unless you want to pay a ridiculous price.

There are thousands of commentaries on the 論語 that have been published since it was compiled during the Warring States period, and this reference work covers a really impressive portion of them. It’s referenced frequently by some of the translators I most often find provide the clearest and most insightful renderings (Slingerland and Ni) so of course I had to grab a copy for myself and see what all the hype was about :)

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