Nineteenth Century Missionary-Scholars at Work A Critical Review of English Translations of the Daodejing by John Chalmers and James Legge

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20355151
AutoresWong Man Kong (Mokwon University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2015
Volumen63
Número1
Páginas124-149
Fecha de publicación2015-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaMonumenta Serica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0254-9948 • E-ISSN: 2057-1690
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1179/0254994815z.0000000005
OpenAlexW2301912112
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas7

Daodejing is an essential text in Chinese culture. The number of its English translations exceeds a total of 112 editions. The first one was produced by John Chalmers, who was a Scottish missionary from London Missionary Society stationed in Hong Kong and Canton for a long period of time. Chalmers's close missionary colleague, James Legge, who was subsequently the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford, produced another translation. This paper aims at revealing the socio-cultural and intellectual processes behind the making of these two translations. In so doing, it discusses the differences in the two texts and explores the reasons for their differences.Christian missionaries in China were the agents for the cultural interactions between China and the West. Not only did they bring the Christian message to China, but they also introduced the Chinese ideas through their translations and writings to their Western audience. This should be a fruitful and important topic for serious scholarship in both the studies in Sinology and in the history of translation

Aesthetics · Art · China · Literature · Political science · Scholarship · Sinology · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Classics · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies