On the Chinese Translations of <i>The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School</i> from the Perspective of Paratext

Abstract

As the first work on ancient Chinese economic thought overseas written by a Chinese, The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School attracted huge attention of Western researchers, however the studies of the content and opinions on this work at home are not expanded until the late 20th century, which mainly concentrated in the field of economics and philosophy. Since the publication of three Chinese translations in 2009 and 2010, this work gradually come into public readers’ scope, but there are few researches study from the perspective of translation studies. This paper will take three different translators’ first Chinese versions as the case study to compare the paratext in each translation. Paratexts, acting as the mediator between the text and readers, explains cultural values and reveals the translators’ translation ideas and strategies. This study aims to describe and analyse the paratext of translation products and explore the reason behind it, in order to provide references for the transmission and communication of texts on social sciences.