The Modern Institutional Translation of Confucian Virtue Categories Centered on the "Five Constants"

— Traditional Confucian virtues take moral cultivation as their primary vehicle and are contextual, relational, and largely non-coercive, whereas modern public institutions require generally applicable rules, executable procedures, and clearly defined rights boundaries. No direct correspondence can therefore be presumed between virtue concepts and institutional arrangements. Building on modern Confucianism, institutional Confucianism, and studies of ritual order, this article defines institutional translation as a four-stage process: selecting publicizable elements of a virtue, reinterpreting them under modern conditions, limiting their normative scope, and embedding them in procedures. Through three cases—benevolence and public service, ritual propriety and norms of public interaction, and filiality and eldercare—the article argues that any translation must satisfy three tests: contribution to the public good, protection of individual rights, and procedural legitimacy. The modern institutionalization of Confucian virtues is thus neither a direct legal transplantation nor a purely rhetorical claim of compatibility, but a limited translation constrained by rights and procedures.