magazinelogo

Translation and Foreign Language Learning

ISSN Online: 3069-0315 ISSN Print: 3070-3077 CODEN:
Frequency: monthly Email: tfll@hillpublish.com
Total View: 429775 Downloads: 110776 Citations: 8 (From Dimensions)
ArticleTranslation Theories and Skills http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/tfll.2026.02.009

A Corpus-based Study of James Legge’s English Translation of “Li” in Li Ji from the Perspective of Manipulation Theory

Yisha Shi, Jiayu Liu, Guangwei Li*

School of Languages and Literature, University of South China, Hengyang 421001, Hunan, China.

*Corresponding author: Guangwei Li

This study was supported by Hunan Provincial Graduate Teaching and Research Project “On the Cultivation Path-ways for International Communication Competence of Foreign Language Postgraduates in Local Universities under the Context of New Liberal Arts” (No. 2025JGYB273).
Published: February 28, 2026

Abstract

Li Ji (The Book of Rites) assigns the term “Li” to a range of practices and values that cannot be covered by any one English word. This article examines how James Legge handled that difficulty in his 1885 translation for The Sacred Books of the East. A Chinese-English parallel corpus was compiled, and occurrences of “Li” were grouped as life-cycle rites, sacrificial rites, or conventions of daily conduct. The counts reveal a clear contextual pattern. In passages on life-cycle rites, Legge relies chiefly on “rites” and “ceremonies” and tends to retain more source-cultural distinctiveness than domesticating alternatives, though these choices still involve some interpretive simplification. Sacrificial passages, by contrast, favor “ceremonies” and “sacrifices,” terms that bring the text closer to religious vocabulary familiar to nineteenth-century English readers. In passages on daily conduct, “rules” is the most frequent choice, presenting “Li” primarily as a code of behavior. Read through Lefevere’s account of translation as rewriting, these shifts suggest the combined pressure of Christian concepts, Victorian scholarly style, and the missionary-academic institutions that supported Legge’s work. His rendering of “Li” is therefore better understood as a patterned response to different ritual contexts than as a series of isolated lexical substitutions.

Keyword

Manipulation Theory; Li Ji; Li; James Legge; cultural rewriting

References

Chen, S. (2016). On patron's ideology in translation from the perspective of rewriting theory. Foreign Language Research, 4, 78-83.

Hermans, T. (Ed.). (1985). The manipulation of literature: Studies in literary translation. Croom Helm.

Huang, Q. (2012). A study of James Legge's English translation of The Book of Rites from the perspective of Skopos theory. Journal of Hunan University of Science and Engineering, 33(5), 150-153.

Lefevere, A. (1992). Translation, rewriting, and the manipulation of literary fame. Routledge.

Legge, J. (Trans.). (1885). The Li Ki. In F. M. Müller (Ed.), The sacred books of the East (Vols. 27-28). Clarendon Press.

Li, Y., & Zhang, C. (2009). On the English translation of the Confucian concept "Li." Foreign Language Research, 5, 89-93.

Lin, X. (2011). Strategic mistranslation from the perspective of manipulation theory. Shanghai Journal of Translators, 3, 36-40.

Munday, J. (2016). Introducing translation studies: Theories and applications (4th ed.). Routledge.

Peng, L. (2011). The philosophical connotation and contemporary value of "Li." Confucius Studies, 4, 5-13.

Sun, X. (2025). Ritual education thought in Li Ji and its contemporary moral education value [Master's thesis, Qufu Normal University].

Tian, J. (2014). On the etymology, origin, attribute, and structure of "Li." Journal of Sichuan University (Social Sciences Edition), 5, 36-45.

Venuti, L. (1995). The translator's invisibility: A history of translation. Routledge.

Wang, D. (2023). Translation poetics and poetic translation. Chinese Translators Journal, 44(2), 5-16.

Wang, S., & Fu, Y. (2014). An interpretation of "Li" in pre-Qin Confucianism. Morality and Civilization, 2, 85-89.

Wu, Y. (2020). A corpus-based study of translator style in English translations of Li Ji [Doctoral dissertation, Wuhan University].

Wu, Y., & Liu, J. (2017). Overseas dissemination of the English translation of Li Ji from the perspective of translation communication studies. International Communications, 9, 53-55.

Wu, Y., & Liu, J. (2022). A study on translation operational units and the translator's subjective traces: A case study of James Legge's English translation of Li Ji. Foreign Language Research, 5, 73-79.

Zhang, B., & Liu, J. (2019). The educational communication thought and contemporary value of Chinese ritual. Journal of Zhengzhou University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 52(3), 113-118, 128.

Copyright

© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

How to cite this paper

A Corpus-based Study of James Legge’s English Translation of “Li” in Li Ji from the Perspective of Manipulation Theory

How to cite this paper: Yisha Shi, Jiayu Liu, Guangwei Li. (2026). A Corpus-based Study of James Legge’s English Translation of “Li” in Li Ji from the Perspective of Manipulation Theory. Translation and Foreign Language Learning2(2), 230-236.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/tfll.2026.02.009