영국 한학자(漢學者) 제임스 레게(James Legge)의 유교경전 번역에 관한 연구

A Research on the translation of Confucian scriptures by James Legge

James Legge is a British missionary and Chinese scholar who came to China at the end of the 19th century. After arriving in Hong Kong, he served as the principal of “英華書院” (Anglo-Chinese College) and translated Confucian scriptures, including the “四書五經” (Nine Chinese Classics), into English. Legge first came to China on a missionary mission, but later became more active and famed as a Chinese scholar. His translation of the Confucian scriptures was due to his long stay in China, over 40 years of sincere research, and the help of an excellent assistant named 王韜(Wang Tao). Legge introduced the Western world by translating Nine Chinese Classics and Confucian Classics into English. Legge can be said to be a person who evaluated Confucianism in China relatively highly and tried to harmonize Confucianism and Christianity by absorbing the positive aspects of Confucianism as much as possible in a situation where Western cultural supremacy thoughts prevailed at the end of the 19th century. After returning to England, Legge became the first professor of Chinese studies at Oxford University in 1876. Recently, with the development of high-tech science and technology media such as AI and Google Translate, more and more people rely on foreign language translation. However, no matter how advanced science and technology such as AI is, there will be limitations in completely translating the contents of the profound Confucian scriptures, which contain the wisdom of ancient Chinese saints, into English or other languages. In this sense, it is necessary to reconsider Legge's efforts to deeply study difficult Confucian ideas from the perspective of European who are not from the same Chinese character culture, translate them into English, and deliver them to European.