Disambiguating Controversial Chapters in The Analects from the Perspective of Functional Context Theory

Increasing translation of Chinese Classics calls for more attention to translation evaluation. Within the framework of context theory in Systemic Functional Linguistics,this paper,taking "ku" in the first chapter of The Analects as an example,integrates macro-analysis with bottom-up analysis to research on the intra-lingual translation model of controversial chapters. It is found that context reconstruction can help to solve the ambiguity involved. Based on this research, "ku" herein should be translated as "being shallow" rather than "being firm".