有子曰: “礼之用，和为贵。”
Three of Confucius’ favorite disciples--- “回”(hui), “曾子”(zengzi), and “有子”(youzi) appeared in these examples.
One method used for rendering Confucius’ disciples’ names is to transliterate in Pinyin according to their pronunciation. For example, “子夏” as “Zixia”. Here “回” refers to “颜回”, styled 子渊，so it can be rendered as “Yen Hui” or “Hui”. This kind of communicative translation confirms the tradition of western people, to call others name directly, without consideration of their status. To western reader, it is easier for them to remember and understand.
The disciples ranked with “子” are translated as Master Yu/You “有子”, and Master Tseng/Zeng “曾子”, in respect who were Confucius’ prominent disciples and later became significant teachers in the Confucian school after Confucius’ death. This semantic translation, which was adopted by many translators, is regarded as the most suitable one. While in some other version, “有子” and “曾子” are translated as “The philosopher You” and “The philosopher Zeng”. These two methods more accord with Chinese tradition, using semantic strategy to reproduce the polite image of Chinese people.
3.2 Translation of Cultural Images
Cultural image is an integrative part of culture. All the images connected with social and religious culture such as a special thing, an allusion, an animal etc will challenge translators. A cultural classic such as The Analects is abundant with cultural images, so how to transfer them or transfer their meanings is a vital problem. And now, we will discuss from the image of religious culture.
3.2.1 Religious Cultural Images
Eg5: 子入太庙，每事问。
Version1: The Master, when he entered grand temple, asked about every thing.
Version2: When Confucius first attended the service at the State Cathedral (Ancestral Temple of the reigning prince), he enquired as to what he should do at every stage of the service.
Version 1 abided by semantic translation that rendered “taimiao”(太庙) into “grand temple”, which retained literal meaning as well as extended some cultural message to the target audience. While version 2 turned to communicative translation that employed “Great Cathedral” with strong color of Western religion, in which Western religion took the place of ancient Chinese tradition. “Great Cathedral” is totally different from “taimiao”, which, in ancient China, is the state temple for the first reigning emperor. This image implies the ancestor of our Chinese people. This is one of the most obvious and controversial characteristics of version2, that is, it regards Confucianism as a religion, Ku said, “Confucianism, without being a religion can take the place of religion. Therefore, there must be something in Confucianism which can give to the mass of mankind the same sense of security and permanence which religion affords them.” (Ku Hunming, 1998:23) In his opinion, Confucianism is of the same value as Western religious sayings but not the same nature.