Translation - Analects of Confucius 1.12

1.12: 有子曰：「禮之用, 和為貴。先王之道斯為美，小大由之。有所不行，知和而和，不以禮節之，亦不可行也。」

1.12: Yǒu Zǐ yuē: “Lǐ zhī yòng hé wé guì, xiān wáng zhī dào sī wéi měi, xiào dǎ yóu zhī. Yǒu suǒ bù xíng, zhī hé ér hé, bǔ yǐ lǐ jié zhī, yì bù kě xíng yě.”

1.12: You Zi (the philosopher) said: "Using/usefulness of ritual, harmony becomes valuable. Way of Frist Kings this/thus became beauty, small and large follow it. Having (this) and not acting, knowing harmony but not (having) harmony, this cannot be walking/doing/capable!”

禮之用, 和為貴

The first half of the phrase, 禮之用 (Lǐ zhī yòng), has a straightforward grammatical structure. The initial interpretation gives us “use of ritual” or “usefulness of ritual.” It probably means something like: “when using ritual…” but we have to infer this from context. The second half is more complicated. 為 is very versatile in classical Chinese and can result in several interpretations. 為 is often parsed as “A for B” and can mean exchanging A for B or A is doing something for the sake of B. Because 為 signifies a relationship between two terms the resultant interpretation can use a wide variety of words to represent that relationship. Tricky stuff.  

先王之道斯為美 (xiān wáng zhī dào sī wéi měi)

The translation of this phrase is also requires understanding how to use 為. The initial part is easy: “The way of the first (ancient) kings…” In this context we might translate 斯為美 as “thus became beautiful.” This relies on prioritizing our function words and correctly parsing the phrasing.