How Many Pages Are in the Book Art of War
Sun Tzu's The Fine art of War is one of the most widely read of the military classics. A very large number of translations exist, of decidedly uneven quality. Some of these "translations" omit large portions of the original text's commentary; and some of them are glossy, slicked-up books that bear trivial relation to the original.
Equally it turns out, The Art of War has much to tell us about the art of translation. The translator must know the language, of course; but he must likewise know his subject, and take a sensitivity to the nuances of a piece of work's historical context. The quality of a translation can make or suspension a work. A good translation can communicate the spirit of the original, while a bad one tin amerce a reader permanently.
There is a delicate rest that must be struck between allegiance to the original, and the need to convey ideas into another medium in a way that sounds lucid. The translator succeeds or fails in how he manages these 2 tensile factors.
I wish to make the case that the best translation of Sun Tzu is the 1963 edition by Samuel B. Griffith. Griffith was a remarkable human being: a decorated combat veteran of the 2d World War, a Chinese linguist, and an Oxford-educated Ph.D.
Sun Tzu is practically part of the popular civilization now—he is even quoted in Oliver Stone's film Wall Street—only before Samuel Griffith, he was most entirely unknown in the West. Information technology was Griffith, through his vivid translation, that raised Sun Tzu from obscurity.
Groundwork on the human being
Born in Lewiston, Pennsylvania, he graduated from the U.S. Naval University in 1929 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.South. Marine Corps. From 1931 to 1933, he served in Nicaragua with the American forces aiding that country'southward Guardia Nacional, in what later became somewhat derisively referred to as the "Assistant Wars."
After this, he was posted to Red china. It is not widely known at present, but units of the Quaternary Marines were posted in Shanghai in the early on 1930s to protect American interests. China at the fourth dimension was experiencing ane of its periodic descents into chaos and war, and duty at that place was not without its share of excitement. Duties there consisted primarily of policing the borders of the international concessions that had been carved out by various foreign powers.
Griffith, all the same, was assigned at the language officer at the American Diplomatic mission in Peking. From the moment he arrived in China, he devoted himself to the study of the Chinese language. According to his statements in later interviews, he spent half dozen hours per twenty-four hours, five days per week, in intensive study of this almost challenging and subtle language.
Within 2 years he was able to read a basic newspaper article. Subsequently leaving China in 1938, he was confident that he had gained a working knowledge of modern Chinese. This knowledge would serve him well in his later career.
He was awarded the Navy Cross and the Purple Heart on Guadalcanal for his part in the fighting at Matanikau River; later, at the isle of New Georgia, he was decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross.
With the end of the state of war in 1945, he returned to occupation duty in Northern China in the city of Tsingtao. The remainder of his career was spent in the United states in a variety of staff and command appointments. He retired from agile duty in 1956 as a brigadier full general.
Information technology was at this signal in his life that Griffith proved he was no ordinary armed services man. Whereas most veterans would have been content to rest on their honor and seek a comfortable retirement in some government mail service, Griffith felt the call of other disciplines. So he exchanged the tunic of the soldier for the robe of the scholar. He applied for, and was accepted to, a Ph.D. program at Oxford Academy in the Chinese linguistic communication.
This was not the colloquial, mod Chinese that Griffith had been exposed to previously: this was the classical language of aboriginal China, as dissimilar from modern Chinese equally the language of Euripides would exist to a modern resident of Athens.
Discovering the piece of work
It was here at Oxford that Griffith discovered the remarkable Chinese military classic that became the subject area of his Ph.D. thesis. At that time, the existing translations were either inadequate or entirely unknown.
The first translation of Sun Tzu in the West appeared in 1772 in a French version, released by an obscure Jesuit missionary named J.J.K. Amiot. Information technology was an amateurish try, and received little attending. The offset English translation manifestly did not appear until 1905; this version, done by a British Army captain, was based on a corrupt Japanese edition of Sun Tzu, not the original piece of work.
Some other English language version followed in 1910, and there were a few minor, slipshod efforts made during the war years of 1940-1945 to turn out an acceptable English version.
Griffith's translation towers over all others, both earlier and later him. It is scholarly, informed, and puts Sun Tzu squarely in his historical context. In that location are special sections on the textual tradition, the "warring states" period of Chinese history, Lord's day Tzu and Mao Tse-tung, and a brilliant series of appendices that provide further insight into Sun Tzu's influence.
The text is fully annotated. Most importantly, I think, Griffith preserves, the words of the ancient commentators that pepper the text. Far too many other translators simply omit these commentaries so as to "dumb down" their product, just they course an integral function of the original.
All in all, this is a work of patient scholarship, not something churned out for cynical commercial purposes. Griffith brings a combination of skills to the table that no one else has been able to match: his war machine experience, his mastery of Chinese, and his treat the classical Chinese language.
If y'all want to read Sun Tzu, this is the version to read.
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