The role of translation in the study of Confucianism: Works of scholars from the institute of China and modern Asia of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The article presents an overview of works on Confucianism prepared by researchers from the Institute of China and Modern Asia (Institute of Far East) in the post-Soviet period. Particular attention is paid to the history of scholars’ translation activities, which in this period became increasingly intensive. The article focuses on the translations of the classical canons 四 书 “The Four Books” and 五 经 “The Pentateuch”, which had a great influence on the spiritual culture of China. Translations of Confucian works are compared in the framework of “scientific - poetic, special - popular, full – partial”. The aim of the study is to determine the role of translation in the study and popularization of Confucian philosophy. The paper demonstrates that the translations by scholars from the Institute of China and Modern Asia are based on a deep theoretical analysis of Confucian philosophy, the study of original sources in Chinese, taking into account the scientific results of Chinese textual scholars and clarifying previous Russian-language translation versions. Thus, many years of research on Confucianism have prepared the ground for the rapid development of translation in this sphere. At the same time, the appearance of new translated versions and translations of Chinese monuments, previously unknown to Russian readers, on the one hand, contribute to the deepening and intensification of scientific research on Confucianism; on the other hand, they popularize an important component of Chinese spiritual culture due to the accessibility of the presentation of postulates and a wide-range-of-readers orientation of new translations. The article concludes that the bidirectionality (scholarly research - translation, translation - scholarly research) and mutual enrichment of scholarly and translation activities have contributed to the emergence of a large number of good books that synergistically combine scholarly accuracy and objectivity with a popular style of presentation that is close to modern readers.