Why Most Translations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War Get it WRONG!Comparing Translations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War |
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| The Institute and Clearbridge Publishing are dedicated to accuracy in
translating The Art
of War. There are many TERRIBLE English translations of this great book and very few accurate ones.
However, all English translations are limited because the original Chinese
was more like mathematics than English sentences. You can see this
different clearly in our Ancient Chinese Revealed
version, which is now used as the basis for translation into other
languages as well as English.
Other than the difference between mathematics and prose, there are three challenges in understanding Sun Tzu's strategy from most English translations: 1) mistakes in meaning, 2) translator's opinions mixed with Sun Tzu's concepts, and 3) lack of context. You can see a comparison between popular versions by clicking here, but a general description of their problems gives you the idea more quickly. Mistakes in MeaningMost translations of The Art of War are filled with inaccuracies, often actually reversing Sun Tzu's advice. Why and how do translators get the book's meaning so wrong? Sometimes, translating Chinese, especially ancient Chinese, is extremely difficult. Most errors occur simply because the translators didn't first try to understand the book's underlying principles. There are thousands of translation errors in the various versions of The Art of War available today. To help you understand their problems, we list the most common categories of inaccuracy with typical examples; click the link below. Click here to see the common categories of mistranslation plus examples.
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Misleading StyleGriffith, Sawyer, Cleary, Clavell and the rest: are these translators interested in giving you Sun Tzu's Art of War or their own opinions about it? When you compare them with the Chinese in our Ancient Chinese Revealed version, you see that translators often add material to offer their own "explanations" of Sun Tzu, especially when they personally disagree with or misunderstand Sun Tzu ideas. We have taken some trouble to compare a stanza of each popular translation with the original Chinese so you can appreciate the different approaches, but this particular stanza doesn't reflect the really egregious errors, which differ by author. In some versions, a single line of Sun Tzu is translated into a paragraph where the first line translates Sun Tzu while the rest that explains away what Sun tzu plainly said. Click here to see the differences in style. What Is the Context?The problem with most translations is that they focus on the Chinese characters, which can have many different meanings largely depending on the context. To understand Sun Tzu's competitive system, you need more than just a translation of the words; you first need the context. There are so many issues related to context, that we actually explain them in several different books, including our Amazing Secrets and Warrior Class versions. Click here for an explanation of bing-fa, his system of competition. |
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