Review: Confucius Says

[xiaokaka]

This is a short review of the book《孔子说》 "Confucius Says", a part of the "Wise Men Talking Series". It was given to me as a part of the first round book giveaway here at the forums, and I want to thank Elina and Sinolingua for this opportunity. 

 

 

It is a book containing 201 pages (excluding the introduction) and a total of 100 sayings from Confucius.  

 

The book starts of with an introduction to the Wise Men Talking Series, both in Chinese and in English. After that, there is a detailed table of content including all the sayings (again in both Chinese and English) listed alphabetically according to pinyin. An introduction to the book follows, giving a brief description of the life of Confucius. After the short introduction the main part of the books starts – with the layout staying the same the rest of the book. 

 

On the verso (left) pages there is an abbreviated form of the saying and an illustration. The first saying of the book is used as an illustrative example:

 

 

On the recto (right) pages, the full sayings are given (in Classical Chinese), together with a translation to English and annotations (注释) in Mandarin and a translation (译文) to Modern Mandarin. Pinyin is not given, except for some rare words and then only in the annotation. The recto side of the first saying:

 

 

I also typed it up:

 

爱之，能勿劳乎? 忠焉，能勿诲乎？

 《论语 • 宪问》

 

Confucious said, “To love him means not to let him indulge in comfort; to be loyal to him means to teach him.”

 

【注释】

 爱之，能勿劳乎：爱子，故曰“爱之”，“劳”，是为父之道。《战国策 • 赵策》：“父母之爱子，则为之计深远。” 故要“劳之”，不能让他贪图安逸。《左传 • 隐公三年》：“爱子，教之以义方，弗纳于邪。”忠：忠诚。《论语 • 学而》：“为人谋而不忠乎？”

 

 【译文】

 孔子说：“爱他，就不能让他贪图安逸。忠于他，就不能不对他进行教诲。”

 

 

 

Another example: 

 

 

 

There is not much else to say about the book. The examples speaks for themselves, as the rest of the book follows exactly the same format. I cannot judge the quality of the translations, since I don't know any literary Chinese. Whether or not you like it depends on what you are after. I personally think it's a neat collection of sayings and it will be interesting to read them all more in depth, and hopefully I will also learn a little bit of literary Chinese in the process.