How to Represent the Spirit of the Sage?-On the English Translation ofThe Analectsin the Direction of the “Heart-Resource”

Though accepting Cheng Yi's statement that the chapter in The Analectsconcerning Master Kong's ambition represents the "spirit of the sage", Zhu Xi puts forward two incompatible interpretations for it, misleading the later 17 modern Chinese and 19 English translationss either interpreting the word zhi(之) as "I" or other men, or focusing on the contextualization of the words concerned.Thus, with the involvement of worldly affairs and the material enjoyment pinpointed, these exegeses ignore the key to the Ruist(儒家) "learning for oneself":The "heart" that every one of us should return to.Actually, in the view of the school, the elder act as the symbol of cultural tradition where there is the home of man.So the first part of the Master's ambition means that only in the "heart" can we settle ourselves, while "trust"(信) and "cherish" (怀) in the second and third sections also lead to it as they stress the significance of his ideal of "All is one under the Tian".It is thus suggested in this paper that the heart-resource be established in accordance with the way of Centering the heartand " One threading all", in order to communicate the original message and meaning of the text, indicating that the history of the cross-cultural translation of the book needs to be altered to its right course.