
Comparing English Translations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War - wslh
http://scienceofstrategy.org/main/content/comparing-english-translations
======
tokenadult
The previously posted comments are correct that the way to evaluate a
translation is to find someone who knows the original language. I do read
literary Chinese, although I have never tackled the full text of Sun Tzu's The
Art of War. (I've mostly read the major philosophers like Confucius and
Mencius.) There was a whole genre of Chinese literature at that time of guides
to warfare, so 兵法 ("art of war") is a title of some other books from that era,
which is why Sun Tzu's book is usually mentioned with his name.

Literary Chinese has quite intricate grammar, about which both Chinese and
Western linguists debate in book-length works. Just as with any other
language, a word-by-word approach to translation will not do. When I first saw
this article submitted to Hacker News, I read it for a while, looking for
clues that the blog post author actually knows Chinese. To me, too, the site
looked a bit like a scam, trying to sell management advice based on an ancient
holy text for rather too much money.

For me, the key take-away from translations of Sun Tzu's Art of War that I
have read is to leave an enemy a way to flee. Don't force people to fight to
the death by surrounding them entirely. That advice was followed when P.R.C.
soldiers moved in on the peaceful Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989. One
corner of the square was left open as an escape route so that people could
simply run away.

~~~
caycep
The lack of "academic" translations such as Lionel Giles's or Victor Mair's is
odd for that site...

~~~
mistermumble
I like this free online version, which shows side-by-side original with
corresponding English translation (derived from Lionel Giles work in 1910).
The Chinese version shows characters with tooltip-style dictionary entries.
Very useful if you are trying to learn the language.

[http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/artofwar.php](http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/artofwar.php)

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japaget
Link to a free download of their translation:
[http://scienceofstrategy.org/main/content/free-sun-tzus-
art-...](http://scienceofstrategy.org/main/content/free-sun-tzus-art-war-
ebook-acrobat-kindle-and-ebook-readers)

I read the samples of the translations, and their translation and the Sawyer
translation seemed to be the best to me. (Full disclose: I don't know any
Chinese.)

~~~
huxley
That's an interesting coincidence since the "translator" Gary Gagliardi
doesn't either. His theories of translation are quite unique.

From an interview (
[http://www.sonshi.com/gagliardi.html](http://www.sonshi.com/gagliardi.html) )
that was done with him:

"Languages have always been my hobby and, at the time, I had spent about three
years studying written Japanese, so I had some grounding in the Kanji
character set that is shared with Chinese.

However, I discovered that ancient Chinese is a language unto itself, written
more conceptually (or poetically, as some prefer) than any modern spoken
language. Fortunately, I also have a bit of a background in mathematics and
physics and I immediately saw the similarities between The Art of War and
classical Greek mathematics, especially Euclid (I also study ancient Greek).

With my background in using Sun Tzu's concepts successfully in business
competition with years of explaining these ideas to others, I was better
positioned to interpret Sun Tzu's equations than someone who was a linguist
alone. I started with the assumption that Sun Tzu didn't contradict himself
so, if there was a contradiction in the translation, the problem was with the
translation, not the original.

I also had the advantage of working from a complete compilation of Sun Tzu
various textual traditions created by the University of Taipei, so I had a
more complete source document that many other English translators and a number
of Chinese dictionaries on the Internet for doing research and on-line
versions of other texts from the period (such as the Tao Te Ching)."

------
jheriko
interesting stuff. its very hard to judge translations without knowing the
original and the language of it... its a shame this website mainly has the
appearance of some kind of scam. can't quite put my finger on it...

maybe needs a good design pass on it - it might sell more books then. :)

can't help but notice its using apple's font preference and the same list of
fallbacks too...

~~~
McUsr
Yes, it feels like a mail-order site to me too.

Not like scam, but more like "hey we are all after you money, and that is
about it."

Maybe it is the aggressive adverticing of their products, that makes for that
either mail-order/scam/new-age/Evangelical Christian feeling I get?

I'd be much better with a gentler introduction, and then hit harder as I
dwelled deeper into the material.

I have actually read a good copy of Sun Tzu already. And after having looked
briefly at the sight, I decided to dwell no further into the subject.

I recommend I'Ching translated by Richard Herman, if it has been retranslated
into english.

------
RexRollman
Translators can end up with considerably different results. The first version
of the Tao Te Ching I ever read was Stephen Mitchell's translation. I later
picked up another version and just couldn't stand it.

~~~
X4
THAT is really weird! Because in NLP and Machine Translation the symmetric
translation of text is seen as proof that the algorithm works perfectly.

And I had the opinion, that professional linguists or bilingualists, should
all come up with almost or mostly identical translations. And when their
translations are published, they should easily be able to have consensus, that
one translation is better than the other, which reflects the coherent
structure of language.

~~~
colanderman
_in NLP and Machine Translation the symmetric translation of text is seen as
proof that the algorithm works perfectly._

Are you serious? That's the dumbest metric ever. Even a translator that does
nothing passes that metric.

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NAFV_P
In 1024 years time, an article will be posted on _intergalactic HN_ comparing
translations of the linux kernel source from ancient C to _SaturnScript_.

Luckily they pickled Torvalds' head in a jar (which he wasn't too pleased
about, since he was stuck on the display cabinet between Zed Shaw and RMS, &&
Fabrice Bellard was at the end continuously spewing out *&£$script mangled
with Haskell and BrainFuck for an entire millenium), so he was able to give
some guidance.

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samograd
I have a copy titled 'The Art of Strategy'. The author states that the proper
translation of 'bing' was 'strategy' rather than 'war'. I asked a friend from
China what he thought 'bing' means and he said 'soldier' or 'war'.

I'm not sure why the author of my copy translated that way, but he did mention
that the translations vary depending upon the zeitgiest of the times.

I think his idea was that war was wrong and that we should be moving to a new
ideal. I agree, which I why I bought that copy, rather than the one about war.

\-- X

~~~
Someone
Hm, did they have Chinese input picking a product name for their search engine
at Microsoft?

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runarb
Translating can be hard, especially when dealing with old dead languages. Just
look at all thus different English text for John 14:2
[http://biblehub.com/john/14-2.htm](http://biblehub.com/john/14-2.htm) .

 _" My Father's house has many rooms"_ and _" There is more than enough room
in my Father's home"_ may not mean the same at all, especially when taken out
of its original context.

~~~
auctiontheory
At one level, translation is literally "impossible." Books are written for
people who speak a common language, and have a common cultural context. No
matter how "accurately" the individual words (or broader meanings, which is
different) are translated, there just isn't a 1:1 mapping to another culture,
place, and time.

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visakanv
I've always been bothered by how things like The Art of War and Machiavelli's
The Prince haven't been made more accessible to the modern general public,
"translated" to the modern age while keeping the richness and complexity of
the ideas expressed. Something I'd love to try and work on if I had the time.

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lhnz
I've read the John Minford translation of the book [1]. Does anybody know
whether this is any good?

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-War-Penguin-
Classics/dp/0140...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-War-Penguin-
Classics/dp/0140455523)

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stcredzero
Translations make a big difference. JRR Tolkien's _Gawain and the Green
Knight_ is head and shoulders above another soulless and forgotten one I read.

