As for the version of the Critique of Pure Reason that the spontaneous reading group from Wu Men is using, I personally recommend the Li Qiuling translation. Last year, a revised annotated edition came out, and it should be the best among the Chinese translations.
Of course, another option is the Deng Xiaomang translation, and there seem to be many arguments about which is better, the Li translation or the Deng translation. Both versions proclaim fidelity to the original text, but Li’s fidelity lies mainly in diction, whereas Deng’s lies mainly in sentence structure. Li Qiuling is even willing, when necessary, to render “Milky Way” as “milk street,” while Deng Xiaomang declares that he will try as far as possible not to alter German sentence patterns.
Added to this is the fact that Kant’s own writings are notoriously obscure, so one cannot expect any Chinese translation to read smoothly and easily. But comparatively speaking, I still think the Li translation is more accurate and easier to read. Why? First let us analyze the two kinds of fidelity mentioned above. One is fidelity to the source of the words, the other is fidelity to the structure of the sentence: which is more important? We know that elaborate, nested long sentences are a feature of Western languages themselves, not of philosophical writings as such. Of course, philosophical argumentation is generally more logically stringent, so the syntax may be more complex than in ordinary language, but just how much philosophical significance is actually contained in these elaborate nested structures themselves? The key point is that sentence structure serves expression. Although the order of words and the way pauses fall are also to some extent meaningful, philosophers are after all not poets, and Kant himself was not a writer known for his grammar. The rhythm of his sentences was probably not such an important matter for him. Moreover, German and Chinese differ enormously in their own patterns of composition and rhythm, and simply reproducing German sentence structure in Chinese may not faithfully recreate the author’s line of thought. Only when a translator is unsure of the meaning, or uncertain how to express it, and does not have much time to refine the wording, is he forced to cling to the structure of the original and translate it that way. This ought to be something a translator would be ashamed of, yet in the hands of Deng Xiaomang and others it has instead become a kind of merit.
By contrast, fidelity in diction is far more important. In an astronomical text or an ordinary text, translating Milky Way as milk road would of course be a joke, but in a philosophical text it may not be. Philosophy values the tracing back to origins and the reconstruction of concepts, and such creative uses often require one to excavate certain hidden elements and clues buried in the words themselves. Moreover, important concepts in philosophical texts are intertwined and mutually permeable; one must never proceed carelessly. Translating Milk Way as the Milky Way may be accurate at the level of local meaning, but it may lose its connection to other concepts (such as milk, road). The translator’s caution in this respect is more reasonable.
Coincidentally, according to the comparison made by Zhang Zhiyang, “Deng’s translation is one in which the intention comes before the words, understanding comes first, and his own understanding is woven into the translation; Li’s translation is one in which the words come before the intention: however Kant says it, that is how he translates it, and he tries as far as possible to make Kant speak Chinese; translation is making the original come alive again. These are two different translation styles.” I think Mr. Zhang is being overly polite here; in fact he is speaking with a touch of irony: Deng Xiaomang is simply making things up and translating recklessly. Then is Deng Xiaomang’s understanding of Kant up to the mark? Perhaps you want to say that Yang Zitao and Deng Xiaomang, teacher and student, have spent more than ten years painstakingly studying Kant, so their understanding must be profound. But on the one hand, Li Qiuling has almost single-handedly taken on the translation of the complete works of Kant, and the effort he has put in surely is no less; moreover, his understanding of Kant may be more vivid and comprehensive. On the other hand, decades of painstaking study do not necessarily mean one has truly mastered the subject. Many older Chinese scholars of Marxist philosophy are living examples. In any case, I have read Deng Xiaomang’s Lectures on Kantian Philosophy, and my impression was mediocre, neither here nor there; and his Lectures on Hegel’s Dialectics did not strike me as very impressive either, which has lowered my confidence in his interpretive ability.
Still, I have not carefully compared the differences between the two translations. The first time I read the Critique of Pure Reason, I used the Deng translation, and I could not keep reading and gave up halfway; only the second time did I turn to the Li translation, and I felt that my understanding flowed much more smoothly. But it is also possible that this was merely an illusion caused by the fact that I had improved somewhat in the intervening period. When I reread it this time, perhaps I will also take Deng’s Sentence Punctuation as a reference and compare them more closely.
A comparison that is often mentioned concerns the translation of Erscheinung and Phenomenon—— Lan Gongwu translated both as “phenomenon,” Wei Zhuomin translated them separately as “appearance” and “phenomenon,” Deng Xiaomang translated them as “phenomenon” and “phenomenal appearance,” while Li Qiuling translated them respectively as “manifestation” and “phenomenon.” ——At least from the standpoint of phenomenology, Deng’s translation seems to have it backwards, while Li’s restores the meaning of “showing” and at the same time leaves room for the established usage of phenomenology.
In short, I suggest that the reading group use the Li Qiuling translation as its main text, preferably the 2011 annotated edition; the complete-works edition or the 2004 single-volume edition would also be fine. The Deng Xiaomang translation can be used for reference, and those with the energy may then look for the English and German texts.
Finally, here are two related reports:
Li Qiuling: Translating Kant in a tipsy, full-blooded state
Li Qiuling: Let Kant speak Chinese
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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