Here’s that pronoun before the verb instead of after it. 未之思 is 未思之, “has not thought of it”, but because 未 comes first, the 之 comes before 思. What the pronoun refers to is where the translators split. Legge and Roberts keep it vague: “the want of thought about it”, “yet to think of it”, and Slingerland, Ames & Rosemont, Lau, Watson, and Chin write “her”, the beloved in the ode Confucius just quoted. Ni goes with “the other”.

The same rule applies to 己 in 不己知 and 之 in 未之有也, so once you’ve seen it here you’ll start spotting it everywhere.

The 之 in 學而時習之 points back to whatever it is you learned. Only one translator keeps it a pronoun:

• Lau: “try it out at due intervals”
• Spelled out: Slingerland, Ames & Rosemont, Chin “what you have learned”; Watson “what you’ve learned”; Ni “what is learned”
• Legge and Roberts fold the whole idea into “application” and “applied”, and never word the 之 at all

This is the first line of The Analects, so it’s also the first pronoun you’ll meet in the book.

Two 之 in four characters, 知之為知之, and both of them stand for the thing you know. Legge writes “When you know a thing, to hold that you know it”, which is just what English needs, a noun to bring up the thing, then a pronoun to pick it up again, and Slingerland and most of the others drop the object entirely: “to recognize what you know as what you know”.

The Chinese doesn’t bother with either. It uses the same pronoun both times.

Again we get 之 twice. The first, in 從之, picks up 其善者, the good qualities of the two companions. The second, in 改之, picks up 其不善者, the bad ones. Legge and Chin write “them” both times. The second 之 is where it gets interesting, because 改 can mean “correct” as in fix the bad qualities, or “correct” as in fix yourself:

• Legge: “their bad qualities and avoid them”
• Ames & Rosemont: “identifying their weaknesses, I reform myself accordingly”
• Lau and Watson recast it without a pronoun: “the bad points of the other I correct in myself”, “note their bad points and make my corrections”

Keep in mind that 之 has no number of its own. It’s the noun it points back to that tells the translator whether to write “it” or “them”.

This is 之 in its simplest shape, noun 之 noun: 父母之年. Legge has “the years of parents”, Lau “the age of his father and mother”, Watson “the age of your father and mother”, and Ni “the ages of your parents”. Chin goes with the apostrophe instead, “your parents’ age”. Whether you end up with “of” or an apostrophe in English mostly depends on which sounds natural with the noun. Chinese doesn’t have to make that choice. It’s the same 之 either way.

Two 之 phrases lined up in parallel, 君子之德 against 小人之德. Seven translators keep the parallel with “of” twice: “The virtue of the gentleman is like wind; the virtue of the small man is like grass” (Lau), and Legge is the odd one out. He throws away both phrases and writes “The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass”, so there’s no 之 left to translate.

鄹人之子 is “the son of the man from Zou”, and that’s Confucius, named by his father’s village. All eight translators write “of” here. The whole sneer of this line is that someone from such humble origins claims to know ritual, and the possessive 之 is what ties him to those origins.

先王之道 is the Way of the former kings. Seven translators write “of”, and Legge writes “the ways prescribed by the ancient kings”, the same relationship said with a verb instead of a preposition.

One more thing to notice while you’re here: the 斯 right after it points back to 和, harmony, from the clause before.

仁之本 is “the root of 仁”, or human-heartedness. I checked eight translators and got eight “of”s, so there’s not much room for argument here. 之 sits between two nouns and makes the first one the owner of the second, which is exactly what 的 does today.

人之不己知 is a full clause, “other people don’t know me”, and the 之 between its subject and its predicate turns it into the object of 患, to worry about. English has a few ways of doing that job, and between them the eight translators use all of them:

• A that-clause. Chin: “Do not worry that other people do not know you.”
• “Whether”. Slingerland and Watson: “Don’t worry about whether other people understand you.”
• An if-clause. Roberts: “It’s no problem if others know you not.”
• A possessive and a gerund. Legge: “men’s not knowing me”; Ni: “others’ not understanding you”. The apostrophe-s is the 之 itself.

Ames & Rosemont and Lau rebuild the sentence around “being acknowledged” and “the failure of others to appreciate your abilities”, and the subordination disappears into the noun. And while you’re looking at this clause, notice 不己知. That’s the pronoun 己 before its verb, because of the negative 不, the same rule we saw with 未之思 above.

為樂之至於斯 is “music’s reaching this level”, and the whole thing is the object of 不圖, “did not imagine”. All eight translators write “that”, which makes sense. A that-clause is the plainest way English has of turning a sentence into a thing you can imagine, or fail to imagine. For the story behind this one, Confucius is in the state of Qi, and he goes three months without noticing the taste of meat.

將死, “about to die”, is a verb phrase, not a noun, so the 之 in 鳥之將死 can’t be “of”. Without the 之, each half of this line would just tell you that the bird is dying and the man is dying. With it, the dying becomes the setup for what comes next. That’s where Legge’s “When a bird is about to die” comes from, and Slingerland, Ni, Watson, and Chin make the same when-clause. Lau and Ames & Rosemont squeeze the whole clause into an adjective instead: “Sad is the cry of a dying bird”.

Don’t read 天之將喪斯文 as “Heaven’s destruction of this culture”. It’s the whole clause “Heaven is about to destroy this culture”, held together by the 之 and closed off by the 也, so that it can serve as the condition for what follows. For the first half, seven translators write “If”, and Roberts writes “Had heaven meant for this culture to perish”, which is the same condition in fancier dress. For the second half, 天之未喪斯文也, Legge goes with “While” and Slingerland, Roberts, and Chin go with “Since”. When one of these clauses comes first in the sentence, an English if-clause is usually the closest you can get.