Two Korean Translations of the Xiaoxue

Abstract

This chapter explores how the Xiaoxue (Lesser or Elementary Learning), a primary textbook for Confucianism in China, was translated into Korean at two different times with a span of seventy years in the sixteenth century. The two different versions of translation of the same book, Beonyeok Sohak (1518) and Sohak Eonhae (1588), not only reflected significant differences in the principles and strategies of translation but also revealed significant difference in the translators’—or their commissioners’—ideologies and worldviews. The two Korean versions of the Xiaoxue were thus a contested ideological battleground for scholars and politicians. In sum, the chapter claims that the debate on the methodology of translation is an issue specific to not just Western translation theory but also non-Western translation theory.