On Mencius’ Key Philosophical Term: Yi C-E Translation in the Perspective of Reception Theory

Mencius keeps a record of political activities, doctrine and philosophy, moral principles and educational ideology of the whole life of Mencius by way of narration and dialogue and also describes the debate over the inborn goodness of human nature, being one of the most influential classic works, which has a profound influence on Chinese philosophy. With the guidance of Reception Theory, based on the corpus of James Legge, the Library of Chinese Classics (hereafter short for LCC) and D. C. Lau’s versions of Mencius, a comparative study will be conducted on the key philosophical term: Yi (义). Quantitative analysis shows that Yi rendered as “righteousness/righteous”, which is the most widely accepted in Legge’s and LCC’s versions with its frequency at the times of 95 and 77 respectively, however, Lau’s seems to be more various using words such as “right/rightness, duties and moral”. The results show that the version of Lau’s shares the same horizon of expectations with the source text while those of Legge’s and LCC’s with the target readers.