Sun Tzu Texts

[Kagnok]

For Tenchimuyo and anyone else who has studied Tzu's work:

I ran across a version translated by R.L. Wing, who chose to call it "The Art of Strategy" instead of "The Art of War." Do you think this is a more appropriate title, or is it instead more of a marketing ploy?

(Wing's book is being sold as a self-help business-type workbook, but he does seem to have taken some care in the translation)

[FwSeal]

Hmm, that does sound like a marketing ploy - but not as bad as one copy of the AOW I had years ago. It had JAMES CLAVELL in big letters across the top of the cover... except that all he did was write a little preface (the actual text was just a reprint of an old translation).

[Tenchimuyo]

Well I think it's just a marketing ploy. Since Sun's book is concentrated on the strategy for battlefield and conditions that affects war and soldiers. So "The Art of War" would be a more appropriate general term for this book.

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A great warrior never reveal his true skills....

[Anssi Hakkinen]

Unbelievably, there is only one Finnish translation of The Art of War in existence - and even that is based on an English translation!

Luckily, it's not that bad a translation. The English-Finnish translation is somewhat substandard (it's a thin book, so of course it must be cheapo ), but the Chinese-English translation is by Brigadier General Samuel L. Griffith, an acclaimed sinologist. It has really extensive prefaces on the Warring States period of China, the book's origins and its various translations. In fact, the prefaces were trimmed down somewhat for the Finnish version so that they wouldn't be longer than TAoW itself!

Still, I ought to buy an English version, too - for one, it would make it much easier for me to quote the text accurately (it's pretty hard to avoid some distortion when the text is translated from Chinese to English to Finnish to English again). So, I too would be anxious to hear if better translations exist than the Griffith one.

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"The warrior who does not know his business is like a cat that does not know the way of ratting."
- Tsukuhara Bokuden

[Kagnok]

I've found that Thomas Cleary's translation to be the most understandable one for me. But I am not a scholar in this area. Being of the western mind, I've had to back up and work with Lao-Tzu. The Art of War seems to have strong Taoist underpinnings. I wouldn't be the first to point out that Taoism is, to western culture, as unfamiliar as if it came from outer space.

[ShaiHulud]

Anssi.. I think Griffith's is the best version I've run across. The others I've read were by Chinese and always assumed I had a extensive knowledge of Chinese history.
They were always refering to battles I knew nothing of and people footnoted in Chinese history with cryptic quotes.

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Wind fells blossoms, rain
fells steel,yet bamboo bends and drinks