This one is mine. 貞而不諒 pairs 而 with 不, so “and not” or “but not” would both be fine.

• Slingerland: “true, but not rigidly trustworthy”
• Watson: “firm but not stubbornly unbending”
• Mine: true to what is right, rather than simply true to their word

I wanted to push the contrast between 貞 and 諒 harder than “but” does, and “rather than” did it.

An action and the restraint on it: he fished, 而 not with the cable that takes everything at once. All eight write “but”. The second half of the passage does the same thing with archery, he shot, but never at a roosting bird, without needing the 而 a second time.

The first adversative 而 in the book, in its first passage. Not being recognized should sting; the gentleman isn’t stung, and the 而 in 人不知而不慍 is where the expectation turns. Only three translators give it a word. Watson writes “Others don’t understand him, but he doesn’t resent it”, and Legge and Roberts write “though men may take no note of him”, “though unrecognized”. Same job, done from the other end of the clause.

The other five fold it into the phrasing, like Slingerland’s “To be patient even when others do not understand”.

Two 而, each setting a pair against itself, and the two clauses mirror each other word for word with 和 and 同 swapped. Where the translators put the contrast:

• “But” both times: Legge, Ni, Roberts, Watson. Legge: “affable, but not adulatory; adulatory, but not affable”
• One “and”, one “but”: Slingerland “harmonizes, and does not merely agree”; Chin “echoes and does not harmonize”
• No conjunction at all: Lau “agrees with others without being an echo”; Ames & Rosemont “seek harmony not sameness”

“And” is possible here because 和 and 同 aren’t opposites until the sentence makes them so.

Three 而 in a row, each between two qualities that aren’t supposed to go together, and in Confucius did. The translators are nearly unanimous about the contrast:

• “yet” all three times: Lau, Ni, Ames & Rosemont
• “and yet”: Legge
• “but”: Roberts, Chin
• Slingerland mixes it up: “affable yet firm, awe-inspiring without being severe, respectful and relaxed”

The whole portrait is built on that one word.

Sequence in time: first the singing, then the walk home. 詠而歸. Slingerland, Ni, Ames & Rosemont, Lau, and Chin write “and then”; Legge and Watson a plain “and”. This is the close of Zeng Xi’s answer about what he’d like to do: bathe in the Yi, take the air at the rain altar, and come home singing. It’s the answer Confucius sighs and agrees with.

The plainest shape there is: verb, 而, verb. And look what happens to it:

• Watson and Slingerland: “and”
• Lau: “gets to know what is new by keeping fresh in his mind”
• Ni: “Acquiring the new from warming up the old”
• Ames & Rosemont: “as a means of realizing the new”
• Legge: “so as continually to be acquiring new”

Six translators, five readings of one syllable. That’s the whole difficulty of 而. It joins, and leaves you to work out how.

Two whole clauses side by side, each with its own subject, and 而 between them: 任重而道遠. Every one of the eight writes “and”. Nothing pulls against anything here, so the join is the neutral one. Zengzi is describing the scholar-official’s life, and the line is a set phrase in modern Chinese, 任重道遠, with the 而 dropped.

The join as consequence: the second verb is where the first one leads. 下學而上達. Legge, Ames & Rosemont, Lau, Watson, and Chin keep a plain “and” and let the reader work out the rest. Slingerland and Ni make the inference for you, “in order to”, and Roberts has “advance upward as we study the world below”. Both are readings of the same 而, which itself says only that 上達 comes after 下學.

This one is mine. 而亦何常師之有 closes Zigong’s argument, and it would be easy to write the 而 as “and”. But everything from 莫 through 夫子 to this 而 is one chain of reasoning: they all have a piece of the Way, so from whom would the Master not learn, so what single teacher should he have had?

• Legge: “And yet what necessity was there⋯”
• Slingerland: “And what need was there⋯”
• Lau: “Equally, how could there be⋯”
• Mine: “So indeed, what single, constant teacher⋯”, to drive the point home

A proper name as the supposed subject: 管氏而知禮. All eight write “If”, and the sentence is a reductio. Grant that Guan Zhong understood ritual and the word means nothing. The same shape shows up at 7.31, 君而知禮, “if the lord knew ritual, who doesn’t?”, where it costs Confucius an embarrassment.

Not a person this time but a thing, 富, and all eight translators write “If”. Then the condition gets flatly refused: were wealth a proper thing to chase, he’d take a whip and hold horses for it. It isn’t, so he follows what he loves. The 而 in 富而可求 is the whole counterfactual.

The textbook case. 人 is a noun, not a clause, so 而 can’t be joining two actions. What it does instead is hold the noun up as a supposition. Three ways into English:

• Legge: “If a man be without the virtues proper to humanity”
• A relative clause: Slingerland, Lau, Watson, Ames & Rosemont, “a man who is not Good”
• Chin keeps the contrast the frame grew out of: “Being human and yet lacking humaneness”

The condition can be a “when” as easily as an “if”:

• “When”: Roberts, Lau
• “if”: Chin, Watson
• “while”: Ames & Rosemont
• Legge, Slingerland, and Ni use a participle or a “then” instead: “having discharged all his duties”, “One who excels⋯ should then devote himself”

優 here is having something left over, not excelling. The 則 in each half answers the 而, and the two together are the classical if-then.

The most quoted 而已 in the book: language has one job. The eight translators find eight ways to close it, because English has no single particle for “and no more” and has to build one each time:

• Slingerland: “and leave it at that”
• Lau: “It is enough that⋯”; Watson: “it is enough if⋯”
• Legge: “is simply required”; Ames & Rosemont: “simply a matter of”
• Chin: “and that would be enough”; Roberts: “Nothing more is required”

This was the passage in episode 4, and the first 虛詞 I ever tried to explain on the podcast.

Zengzi reduces the Master’s whole Way to two words, then seals the reduction with 而已矣:

• Its own sentence: Ni and Lau, “That is all”
• Folded in: Slingerland and Roberts, “nothing more than”; Legge and Ames & Rosemont, “nothing more”
• One word: Watson, “loyalty and reciprocity alone”

Chin leaves it out altogether.

而已 capping a count. King Wu had ten able ministers; one was a woman; nine men, and no more. Seven of the eight write “only”, and Legge writes “no more than nine men”.

The arithmetic is the argument: talent is scarce even in a good age.

The pair inside a question. Zilu has just been told that the gentleman cultivates himself with reverence, and asks whether that can really be the whole of it. Confucius answers by widening the circle, twice. Roberts writes “No more than this?”, and the other seven: “Is that all?”, where 而已 has become the “all”.