A Study of Mistranslations in James Legge’s English Version of the Tao Te Ching

Abstract

As a representative work of early English translations of Chinese classics, James Legge’s rendition of the Tao Te Ching exerts a profound influence in the Western world. Nevertheless, constrained by the uniqueness of classical Chinese as well as Legge’s own cultural background and cognitive framework, his translation contains numerous mistranslations stemming from misinterpretation of vocabulary, misunderstanding of sentence structures and inappropriate expression in target language. Taking Legge’s English translation of the Tao Te Ching as the research subject, this paper conducts analysis on typical cases from the three aforementioned dimensions to reveal the causes and categories of mistranslations. It is hoped that this research can offer references for the English translation of Chinese classics and facilitate more accurate global dissemination of brilliant traditional Chinese culture.