Taylor H Lunsford

Confucius said: “I am not worried that others do not know of me. I worry that I do not know others.”

After taking a hiatus from translation work for most of this past year, I am excited to announce my next project: a complete, original translation of the classic Four Books of Confucianism! In East Asia, these foundational texts have traditionally served as the entry point for anyone setting out on the Confucian path of lifelong learning, self-improvement, and social activism. For more than two thousand years, they have inspired and challenged the brightest minds in Eastern civilization, but they are little known in the West.

I aim to produce faithful but accessible translations of these Four Books- the Analects of Confucius, the Mencius, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean– to make their insights available to a modern English-speaking audience. They will highlight core Confucian ideals that are as relevant today as they were a thousand years ago, like the relentless pursuit of self-improvement, the commitment to build deep and meaningful relationships with others, and the determination to push ahead through hardships and setbacks.

As with my previous translation from Classical Chinese, The Art of War: A New Translation, these books will each include a helpful introduction and detailed commentary to draw out subtle connections and profound ideas across the original texts. These help bridge the gap between the particular historical and cultural environment that the Confucian founders lived in, and the timeless ideas that they developed.

I’ll publish each of the four books in turn, starting with the Analects of Confucius by Spring 2026, in both paperback and Kindle formats. Watch this website and my Amazon author page for updates!

To conclude, I’ll leave you with this excerpt from the Mencius, a text that is fundamentally about speaking truth to power:

King Xuan of Qi asked Mencius: “Is it true that King Wen had a royal park of seventy square li?”
Mencius: “That is what the records say.”
King Xuan: “Was it really that large?”
Mencius: “The people actually considered it too small.”
King Xuan: “I have a royal park of forty square li, and the people consider it too large. Why?”
Mencius: “King Wen’s royal park of seventy square li was visited by cutters of hay and firewood, and by trappers of pheasants and rabbits- it was shared with the people. Didn’t the people have good reason to consider it too small? When I arrived at this kingdom’s borders, I first asked the great prohibitions of the state and only then dared to enter. I heard that within the gates there was a royal park of forty square li, and that killing a deer within the park would be punished as harshly as killing a man. Thus the forty square li becomes a trap in the center of the kingdom. Don’t the people have good reason to consider it too large?”