assignments

3. Should we distinguish clearly between textual theory and interpretive theory? Why or why not? Give an example of how they might be confused.

5. Is holism important to interpretation? Why or why not? Does this mean that we can never find a "correct" translation/interpretation? Explain.

Yes, holism is important to interpretation. Firstly, different from dictionary-like traditional approach which treats translation prior to interpretive theory of language and results in fragmented interpretation, we assert that interpretive theory preceeds translation in order to generate a systematical interpretation of certain text. Beginning with this, a holistic nature of meaning is presupposed when we adopt principles of charity and humanity.  “We attribute beliefs and meaning in the same theory”(p11). Since the principle of humanity purports to found out the internal connection between beliefs, it requires us to understand how a text could be understandable within the context where the author wrote it and fore us to have a presupposition of a whole conceptual system in each case.

Secondly, to hold on holism is to reject the traditional distortion of the philosophical development and the nature of ancient Chinese philosphical discourse. The Neo-confucian theory as the ruling theory, to pretect itself from criticisms from rival theories, simply presupposes two assumptions

6. Which principle should we apply in selecting a radical translation "translation manual" for ancient Chinese? Why?

Appeal to a translation paradigm is the traditional approach of dealing with ancient Chinese but the problem of it is that it simply takes our conventional account of a term for granted when it assigns an equivalent in English to a Chinese term.

The principle of charity and that of humanity should be applied in selecting a radical translation “translation manual” for ancient Chinese. The principle of charity

According to Quine’s theory of radical translation, for one foreign text we may have several translation manuals that all make sense of the same text but may be incompatible with each other. A bad translation manual is to simply appeal to a dictionary which is actually a rough interpretive theory as well but may merely result in an fragmented interpretation of a text. To avoid such traditional approach, we should turn to principle of charity developped and principle of humanity developped by some philosophers in selecting a “translation manual” in terms of radical translation. The priciple of charity advocates the maximization of truth in one language. It assumes that we as human beings shares some reason and capacities to know the world around us no matter how different our languages are. However, the worry with this principle is that it may impose two many contents of our own beliefs and ideas upon the target text in another language. This may work out a systematical interpretation of the text in ancient Chinese but probably make no sense for ancient Chinese whose ideas who just intend to obtain by the interpretation. Hence, we should step further to take up the principle of humanity which aims at maximizing the reasonableness of a language ranther than the truth of it. This principle implies that when we try to produce a radical translation “translation manual” we should not simply rule out an idea or belief that are not compatible with our knowledge but take them up as a plausible background for understanding the target text as long as it is humanly understandable in the context it emerges. Following the principle of humanity could to the highest extent enable us to get rid of the constraints of our own conventional ideas which may be just conceptual biases from the point of target language and capture as initial understanding of these texts as the ancient philosophers hold. Notably, the principle of charity and humanity always work holistically even though some conflicts meight occur in some cases. To make the principle of charity most charitable, I incline to sumordinate it under principle of humanity, that is, when we evaluate a translation manual in accord with the principle of charity we should always assume that there may be knowledge of truth that can only be understandable in the context described according to the principle of humanity.

As I said, the question is really about Quine's triangulation strategy in his approach to radical translation as a way of getting access to inter-linguistic meaning. What he notices is that we can assign any meaning (translation equivalent in our home language) we want to the speakers of the other language as long as we are prepared to credit them with certain beliefs--and vice versa. If we want to make it out that they have certain belief, we can do it by assigning meaning to the requisite lexical items (and syntax structures). In other words the two, meaning and belief, are inter-related and change systematically in relation to each other. Given that we have ways of assessing the beliefs (i.e., their verification conditions (stimulus meaning) or their truth (Davidson) or their coherence with desires and situation (Grandy)) we can put a metric on the result of a systematic attribution of meaning in a translation manual when applied to the actual linguistic production from the relevant community. We have a better translation manual when it results in a "better" set of beliefs/assertions attributed to them.

7. Western interpreters often assume that everyone accepts their "folk theory" of language(the theory that the meanings of terms are private ideas). Is there any danger in making that assumption in interpreting ancient Chinese philosophy? Explain.

8. Explain how assigning different meanings to a word can affect the doctrine we attribute to an author. What about the reverse? Can the conviction that he/she must believe some doctrine affect what meaning we assign to a term? Explain.

According to Hansen, “meaning cannot be determined independently from belief”(p8). When we assign a meaning to a term, or an English equivalent to a Chinese word, we actually have already taken our conventional concetpual assumption into account. Here the meaning is given to the particular Chinese word or character nevertheless the meaning is in fact understood in English context which is the whole conceptual system including beliefs, ideas, theories and the forth. The crucial problem is that not only one equivalent exists in English but many equivalent are used to interpret the same Chinese word by different translators and even by the same translator. This implies that when they assigning different meanings to a word they actually attributing different doctrines to the author. The deeper problem we face is that these doctrines may be incompatible with each other even though they all make sense of the same text. If this happens to a single translation, this must be a bad translation for the lack of coherence. If this happens to different versions of translation, then we need principles to help us evaluate which one of these alternatives is the best one for us to adopt. To work out a coherent and competative translation, we appeal to principle of charity and principle of humanity. This indicates that it is not sufficient to make sense of islated sentence in an interpretation. We must also work out a coherent understanding of the conceptual pattern that the ancient Chinese philosophers may have. The pattern must have its own soundness in conformity with the author’s beliefs rather than a mixed bag of terms attributing to our conventional doctrines. Then “we can say that a philosopher has a certain concept only if we can give a reason for him to adopt the theory asscociated with the concept”(p9). So, according to Hansen, an intelligible interpretive theory should preceed translation. Only through this way could we have an unified interpretation of a text in ancient Chinese. For the meaning is not independent from belief, the meaning that we assign to a term is always affected by the doctrines that attribute to the author. The two elements are mutually connected but for the purpose of a systematic intpretation, the doctrines that we convict authors have should enjoy priority to the meaning assigned to terms.

9. "The most important thing for any new translation is to start with the original form of the Daodejing. Given recent archeological discoveries, we know that is not the traditional(Wang Bi)version. The Mawangdui version certainly better for getting the original intent of the author, Laozi." Discuss this theory of the text. Correct any errors you find.

10. Diagram two ways to analyze the grammar of this statement from the Analects. "君君臣臣父父子子" (ruler ruler minister minister father father son son). Argue for one of them using a radical translation argument.

 君君 臣臣 父父 子子

君君臣臣 父父子子