Sun Tzu's The Art of War

Sunzi Bing-Fa: The Classical Guide to Strategy

A comprehensive overview of Sun Tzu's guide to competitive strategy by the award-winning author of over a score of books on Sun Tzu and his philosophy.

Overview of Sun Tzu's Art of War

Sun Tzu's The Art of War is one of the most widely studied works in human history, but mastering its principles from just reading it is like mastering geometry by simply reading Euclid. It teaches a philosophy that could be described as "winning without conflict." Its philosophy has several aspects:

Understanding strategic positions,
Collecting competitive information and recognizing opportunities,
Automatically selecting moves that minimize losses and avoid dangerous situations,
Instantly recognizing the specifics of situations and the responses they require,
Getting the most out of each move and securing advantages

The work is organized into thirteen chapters. Written in an almost mathematical style, the book starts with the most general concepts and works toward most specific and detailed ideas. Though the ancient Chinese in which the work is written is a conceptual language, in which each character has a broad range of meaning, Sun Tzu treats language scientifically, defining most of his key terms through the course of the work. However, much of the work demands a great deal of understanding of the ancient Chinese science, especially the six philosophical school's that were important during his era (the Yinyang, the Taoist, the Mohist, the Fatalist, the Legalist, and the Confucian). Much of the work also adapts many of its ideas and relationships to the Five Element Theory, where Sun Tzu replaces the Classical Chinese Elements with his own five elements: philosophy (mission), heaven (climate), earth (ground), command (leadership), and methods (procedures). Many of the relationships among these concepts were organized according to the various graphical forms of graphing the five elements, including the Bagua, the cycle of creation, and the star of destruction.

Summary of Chapters

In thirteen chapters, Sun Tzu defines a sophisticated science in a deliberative manner. The book itself is written in a highly condensed form, where each stanza plays a key role in the development of its ideas. Each chapter builds on concepts laid out in earlier chapters.

Chapter 1, "Planning," explores the five key elements that define competitive position (mission, climate, ground, leadership, and methods) and how to evaluate your competitive strengths against those of your competition. This discussion ends with the idea that information in a competitive environment is limited and that perceptions are often very different from reality. This difference between objective and subjective information is one of the principle leverage points for the working of his strategic system.

Chapter 2, "Going to War," defines the economic nature of competition. It explains how success requires making winning pay, which in turn requires limiting the cost of competition and conflict. This chapter is critical to understanding why Sun Tzu teaches "winning without conflict." By definition, conflict is expensive. Beating opponents and winning battles may satisfy the ego, but Sun Tzu considers that goal a foolish one.

Chapter 3, "Planning the Attack" defines the nature of strength. It is important to understand that by "attack," Sun Tzu means specifically the idea of moving into a new territory, not necessarily battle or conflict. Conceptually, you must expand or advance your existing position in order to survive. While defense is less expensive than advance over the short term, change undermines existing positions, so if they are not advanced, they must fail.

Chapter 4, "Positioning," explains how you must use competitive positions. Your abilities to defend yourself and to advance are both based on your current position. To get where you want to go, you must start from where you are. You do not create the openings or opportunities that you need to advance because the environment is too large and complex to control. Instead, you must learn how to recognize opportunities created by changes in the environment.

Chapter 5, "Force," explores the energy that drives all human endeavors: imagination. One of the reasons competitive environments are chaotic is that creativity makes prediction impossible. The human imagination is infinite. Its infinite capacity makes the possibilities of human wealth and progress infinite as well. However, this creativity must be tied solidly to reality. Creativity doesn't work alone. It must be paired with proven methods, that is, existing knowledge, to be effective. Together, they create what Sun Tzu called force or momentum.

Chapter 6, "Weakness and Strength," examines the "circulatory system" of competitive environments, the underlying mechanism of change. As water flows downstream, there is a natural balance of the forces in nature. Voids are filled. Excesses are emptied. Sun Tzu uses this process to explain the deeper nature of opportunity. The multitude of characteristics in the environment can be reduced to emptiness and fullness. Most importantly, human needs are all forms of emptiness, and human produce is all forms of fullness. Using opportunities is largely positioning yourself in the environment to tap into the flow between them.

Chapter 7, "Armed Conflict," explains the dangers of direct conflict. Fighting people over resources is tempting if you don't understand the true nature of opportunity and creativity. However, athough conflict is best avoided, it cannot always be avoided. In those situations, you must understand how you can tip the balance in your favor in any confrontation.

Chapter 8, "Adapting to the Situation," focuses on the need to adapt to the conditions that you encounter. This chapter serves as the introduction to the next three long chapters. These chapters give a number of specific responses to specific situations. This chapter presents the idea that every situation is unique but that it combines familiar elements. While we must be creative and flexible, we must also work within the rules of "standard responses" and not react out of ignorance.

Chapter 9, "Armed March," describes the different situations in which you find yourselves as you move into new competitive arenas. It is the first of the three most detailed chapters. It explains both what those situations mean and how you should respond to them. Much of it focuses on evaluating the intentions of others.

Chapter 10, "Field Position," examines the three general areas of resistance (distance, dangers, and barriers) and the a six types of field positions that arise from them. This is again a long, detailed chapter filled with specific responses that must be learned. Each of the six field positions that it discusses offers certain advantages and disadvantages, both in terms of defending and advancing future positions.

Chapter 11, "Nine Terrains," describes nine common situations (or stages) in a competitive campaign and the recognition and response required in each. This is the last and the longest of the detailed chapters. These nine situations can be generally grouped into early, middle, and late-stage conditions, and they range from scattering to deadly. In each of these situations, there is one and only one appropriate response.

Chapter 12, "Attacking With Fire," discusses environmental attacks and responses. As the most deadly form of destruction in Sun Tzu's era, fire attacks are the framework for discussing both using and surviving moves aimed at the destruction of an opponent. The chapter does this systematically, examining the five targets for attack, the five types of environmental attacks, and the appropriate responses to such attacks. However, it ends with a warning about the emotional use of weapons. While competition can go this direction, it shouldn't.

Chapter 13, "Using Spies," focuses on the most important topic of all: information gathering. It specifically discusses the value and methods of developing good information sources, specifically the five types of sources you need and the way you must manage them. In this final chapter, Sun Tzu makes it clear that all wars are, at their heart, information wars.

The text is written in a circle. The last chapter on gathering information feeds directly back into the first chapter on analyzing information.

History of the Text

Sun Tzu's work has been around for 2,500 years, but Sun Tzu's text has had a complicated history in China. A complete Chinese language version of the text wasn't available until the 1970s.

A Jesuit missionary, Father Amiot, first brought a version of The Art of War to the West in 1782. This first translation, which became associated with Napoleon's success, redefined our ideas of military strategy.

The English translation of Sun Tzu has progressed dramatically over the years. The first English translations were based on fragmentary and often contradictory Chinese sources. Today's modern English translations offer the complete Art of War, and one, The Art of War plus the Ancient Chinese Revealed, is the only award-winning translation and the only translation used as a guide for translations into other languages, including Asian languages.

History of Chinese Text

Sun Tzu (544-496 BC) wrote the original text of The Art of War shortly before 510 BC. During most of the past two thousand years, the common people in China were forbidden to read Sun Tzu's text. However, the text was preserved by China's nobility for over 2,500 years. Unfortunately, it was preserved in a variety of forms. A "complete" Chinese language version of the text wasn't available until the 1970s. Before that, there were a number of conflicting, fragmentary versions in different parts of China, passed down through 125 generations of duplication.

The Chinese preserved the text of The Art of War, known in Chinese as Bing-fa, even through the famous book-burning by the first Emperor of Chi around 200 BC. The text was treasured and passed down by the Empire’s various rulers. At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were two main textual traditions in circulation, known as the

(Complete Specialist Focus) and

(Military Bible) versions. There were also perhaps a dozen minor versions and both derived and unrelated works also entitled Bing-fa. Of course, every group considered (and still considers) its version the only accurate one.

In the twentieth century, sections of the work have been found in a number of archeological digs uncovering the tombs of the ancient rulers of China. These finds have verified the historical existence of the text and the historical accuracy of various sections. New finds are still being made.

The first complete, consistent Chinese version was created in Taipei in the 1970s. It was titled

"The Complete Version of Sun Tzu’s Art of War." It was created by the National Defense Research Investigation Office, which was a branch of Taiwan's defense department. This version compared the main textual traditions to each other and to archeological finds and compiled the most complete version possible.

This work was completed in Taiwan rather than mainland China for a number of reasons. Mainland China was still in the throws of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, which actively suppressed the study of traditional works such as Sun Tzu. The mainland had also moved to a reformed character set, while Taiwan still used the traditional character set in which the text was written. Only today is the study of Sun Tzu in mainland China growing, interestingly enough, through the translation of Sun Tzu into contemporary Chinese.

Based on the archaeological sources we have today, we are reasonably certain of the historical accuracy of this compiled version that is the basis of what most people use today. There is a high probability that most of it is the original work of the first Master Sun, Sun Wu. The same cannot be said about many related works on strategy, attributed to other Chinese scholars, including possibly Sun Wu's descendant, Sun Ping. For these other works, there are fewer traditional sources, questionable histories, and virtually no archaeological sources. While some of these other works may well be historical frauds, virtually all scholars agree on the historicity of Sun Tzu's work, if not the man himself.

First Western Translation

A Jesuit missionary, Father Amiot, first brought The Art of War to the West, translating it into French in 1782. Unfortunately, this translation started the tradition of mistranslating Sun Tzu's work, starting with the title, The Art of War (Art de la guerre). This title, copied the title of a popular work by Machiavelli, but it didn't reflect Sun Tzu's Bing-fa, which would be better translated as "Competitive Methods."

Soon after its publication in France, it was discovered by a minor French military officer. After studying it, this officer rose to the head of the revolutionary French army in a surprising series of victories. The legend is that Napoleon used the work as the key to his victories in conquering all of Europe. It is said that he carried the little work with him everywhere but kept its contents secret (which would be very much in keeping with Sun Tzu's theories).

However, Napoleon must have started believing his own reviews instead of sticking with his study of Sun Tzu. His defeat at Waterloo was clearly a case of fighting on a battleground that the enemy, Wellington, knew best. Wellington’s trick at Waterloo was hiding his forces by having them lie down in the slight hollows of this hilly land. This is exactly the type of tactic Sun Tzu warns against in his discussion of terrain tactics.

English Translations

The public domain versions of Sun Tzu's The Art of War that are available today are all based upon the early translations by Calthrop (1905) and Giles (1910). Another popular work by Samuel Griffith on The Art of War was published in 1963. Written prior to the Chinese compilations of Sun Tzu in the 1970s, all of these works were based on fragmentary and often contradictory Chinese sources.

The Art of War became more popular in the 1980s, when it began to make its way into popular culture. This inspired the popular writers, Clavell and Cleary, to release their own versions of the work, which remain popular today. Unfortunately, these works were based either on earlier English translations or the older incomplete sources, rather than the more complete versions of the Chinese that were now available in China.

However, the compilation the various Chinese traditional versions into a complete text that was done in Taiwan during the seventies didn't show up show up in English until the late nineties, first by Roger Ames and later by myself. My work, The Art of War plus the Ancient Chinese Revealed, remains the only award-winning translation and the only translation that is updated regularly based on the study of the work around the world. Because of its side-by-side format, showing the original Chinese characters individually translated into English across from its English sentence version, this work is used as a base for translations into other languages, including Asian languages.

Problems in Understanding

In The Art of War, the problems in understanding the work start with the fact that Sun Tzu's work is written more like a scientific treatise than "how-to" book.

A how-to book is designed to help the reader understand the material, but in a scientific work—modern or ancient—you have to read every word and every sentence carefully to learn the terminology. You can open a "how-to" book to any chapter and understand most of it without studying the preceding chapters carefully. But science and math start with developing precise language. If you skip even a few paragraphs defining their concepts, you get completely lost. With ancient science, you have the additional barrier of having to understand the underlying scientific methods and models of the period.

Specialized Language

Because we translate Sun Tzu into normal English, readers think they understand what is being said even when they don't. For example, in Sun Tzu's writing, the differences between "fight," "conflict," "battle," and "attack" are as great as the differences between "rational numbers," "irrational numbers," "real numbers," and "imaginary numbers" in mathematics. We can understand what the words "rational" "irrational," "real," and "imaginary" mean but have no idea about how those terms define different types of numbers. The same is true in Sun Tzu's work. You may know what "fight," "conflict," "battle," and "attack" mean normally, but unless you understand the very specific ways these terms and a hundred others are used in The Art of War, you cannot appreciate what he is saying in any specific section.

When you start reading the Art of War, you may notice how much of the work is spent simply defining terms. This process begins on the first page and continues on almost every page. As we read, we cannot keep track of this multitude of definitions. As one definition follows another, the important details of their critical elements are easy to overlook.

Though Sun Tzu carefully defines his terms from the very first page, when translated into normal English, the result appears to be normal nonfiction. When we read "fight," "conflict," "battle," and "attack" we assume we know what is being said. We quickly forget (and often do not even notice) Sun Tzu's very specific definitions. Since "fight," "conflict," "attack," and "battle" mean very similar things in English, we miss most of the specific points that Sun Tzu is making.

As the work goes on, Sun Tzu uses his specialized vocabulary to express very sophisticated ideas. Most of these ideas cannot be easily expressed without that vocabulary. However, since readers do not master the fine distinctions of that vocabulary, they cannot understand the more detailed points that are being made.

Lack of Explanation, Illustrations, and Examples

Sun Tzu didn't write a textbook for modern audiences. In modern textbooks, the authors include examples, illustrations, exercises, and practice drills to help students master the ideas. Sun Tzu's work lacks all these features.

Illustrations demonstrating the connections among these ideas would be very helpful, and, surprisingly enough, his work does include descriptions of such illustrations, but they are written in the scientific tradition of his era. Modern readers have no idea how this culture mapped ideas, so we cannot make the connections that readers in his era did naturally.

If Sun Tzu had written in modern times, he would have explained these ideas in more detail. He would have included examples, exercises, and practice drills to clarify his concepts.

Unfortunately, in his era, people learned from living masters, not from books. On a practical level, writing and duplicating books was too expensive and time-consuming to include a wealth of examples or details. The onus was placed on the reader to study the work rather than on the writer to explain every idea in detail. There is a 2,500-year gap between Sun Tzu's expectations and readers' expectations today.

Sun Tzu's Chinese Scientific Tradition

When Sun Tzu's system is explained in modern terms, it makes logical sense, but you cannot understand the original text without understanding its underlying cultural context.

There were six schools of thought during Sun Tzu's era: the Yinyang, Confucian, Mohist, Legalist, Fatalist, and Taoist schools. Sun Tzu's work was written in the context of all this work.

Yin Yang and Complementary Opposites

Historically, the conceptual base for Sun Tzu's The Art of War is the ancient Chinese concept of "yin and yang." We refer to this idea in classical strategy as "complementary opposites" to avoid the many conflicting cultural meanings of yinyang and because Sun Tzu didn't use that terminology himself. Since Sun Tzu's system deals specifically with competing forces, it is easy to see why opposition is so important, but it goes deeper than that.

Three basic themes underlie this concept. First, it is the fabric of all existence, as mind/body, matter/energy, space/time, and similar dichotomies. Second, it is the pattern of change, the balancing waxing and waning of all things. Finally, it is the constant, dynamic balance of all things, where excesses naturally correct themselves.

The earliest Chinese characters for yin and yang are found on “oracle bones” in the fourteenth century BC. In these inscriptions, they were descriptions of the climate, sunlight during the day (yang), and a lack of sunlight at night (yin). Later these ideas became associated with the division between the sun and moon, and heaven (light) and earth (dark). Over time, they began include the movement of force (chi or qi) between opposites and the physical forms of complementary opposites in nature, such as men and women.

During Sun Tzu's era, the fifth and sixth century BC, the Yinyang School of philosophy was one of the six primary schools mentioned by the historian Sima Qian. It included a number of associated sciences, such as astronomy, numbers, fortune telling, and, most importantly, wuxing, the “five phases” based on the five elements, and zhuguai,the Bagua. All these ideas can be traced back to the I Ching, the source work of Chinese culture. tortoise-shell divination that became associated with

The Zuo Zhuan (Chinese: 左傳) is the earliest Chinese work of narrative history, covering the period from the eighth to fifth centuries BC, as a commentary to the Spring and Autumn Annals, which is the period in which Sun Tzu lived. It defines the yin and yang as the first two of six heavenly forces:

There are six heavenly influences [qi] which descend and produce the five tastes, go forth in the five colors, and are verified in the five notes; but when they are in excess, they produce the six diseases. Those six influences are denominated the yin, the yang, wind, rain, obscurity, and brightness. In their separation, they form the four seasons; in their order, they form the five (elementary) terms. When any of them is in excess, they ensure calamity. An excess of the yin leads to diseases of cold; of the yang, to diseases of heat. (Legge 1994: 580)

Anyone familiar with Sun Tzu's text will note the many parallels here with his work. There is also a very similar pattern of numeric associations. Most of these many numeric patterns in Sun Tzu have complementary opposites embedded within them. The five key factors or elements are two sets of complementary opposites around a core; the six field positions are two extremes in three dimensions; and so on. This concept is critical in understanding Sun Tzu's work.

Sun Tzu taught that the natural balance in competition is maintained by these underlying opposing forces that create stable systems. We succeed in competition by leveraging these forces rather than fighting them.

Interestingly enough, Sun Tzu used the specific terms yin and yang very narrowly in his work. They describe only specific conditions of the ground. Instead, he

preferred to discuss the general concept that we now call "yin and yang" in its specific tangible forms: birth/death, ground/climate, command/methods, defense/attack, nation/army, king/general, survival/destruction, and so on. When he discussed the conceptual movement of energy between two complementary opposites he used the ideas of emptiness and fullness, which we also translate as strength and weakness.

In modern terms, we can express this idea of complementary opposites in a variety of ways. When we say that nature abhors a vacuum, what goes up must go down, and that opposites attract, we are expressing the classical idea. In physics, we talk about positive and negative charges. In statistics, we talk about variation and regression to the mean. In economics, we talk about supply and demand. All these ideas and more are all part of the generic relationships of complementary opposites that are the base of classical front-line strategy.

The Five Classical Elements

As we mentioned in our yinyang chapter, the study of the five elements was originally associated with the wuxing. Wuxing refers to the properties of substances that have certain functional attributes. Water soaks and descends. Fire blazes and ascends. Wood bends and straightens. Metal holds its shape and is malleable. Earth takes seeds and give crops. Wuxing was the early Chinese attempt to work out metaphysics and a cosmology.

Since Sun Tzu's era, Chinese science and philosophy have revolved around these five classical elements, their properties, and their relationships within nature. As with the four Greek classical elements of

fire, air, earth, and water, the essence of the Chinese classical elements was understood to create the differences observed between various objects in the real world.

These elements are representative of different stages of an ongoing process of transformation. On a deeper philosophical level, these elements are seen as stages of being in a cyclical process of becoming. These transformations are driven by the dynamic interplay between complementary opposites.

In recent millennia, the "After Heaven" model of the five elements has been used in traditional Chinese science. We show it below. Sun Tzu based his system on the older "Before Heaven" model, which is still used in some martial arts. Some of the many associations with the five elements are shown.

The Five Elements in Chinese Tradition and Some Relationships
ELEMENTS	WOOD	FIRE	EARTH	METAL	WATER
directions	east	south	center	west	north
virtues	benevolence	propriety	good faith	righteousness	knowledge
actions	countenance	sight	thought	speech	listening
senses	sight	taste	touch	smell	hearing
sounds	calling	laughing	singing	lamenting	moaning
colors	blue/green	red	yellow	white	black
symbols	dragon	phoenix	caldron	tiger	tortoise
seasons	spring	summer	between	autumn	winter
conditions	rain	heat	wind	clear	cold
planets	Jupiter	Mars	Saturn	Venus	Mercury
animals	scaled	winged	naked	furred	shelled
tastes	sour	bitter	sweet	acrid/spicy	salty
smells	goatish	burning	fragrant	rank	rotten

Sun Tzu's Elements

In Sun Tzu's system, the five traditional elements are replaced by the five elements that define the competitive world: mission (path), ground, climate, command, and methods. The most interesting of these is the "mission," which is the center to his formation, because it was adopted from the Taoist school. As with the traditional Chinese philosophical systems, his five elements are reflected in many different aspects of his analysis and methodology.

Sun Tzu appropriated the tools for portraying and mapping traditional elements in his system. The reasons are simple. All educated Chinese in his era were trained to think in these terms. Sun Tzu was practical in designing his system around what everyone already knew. This includes not only the numeric associations with the five elements, but the many other numeric associations in his work. In his day, these patterns enabled students to easily learn and remember the many factors that played a role in competitive situations. Today, however, in true yinyang fashion, they have become one of the many barriers to understanding the same system.

You can compare the relationships in his system, shown below, and the table of the classical elements here. Without understanding these relationships, some critical parts of Sun Tzu's system, which are described in symbols and analogies, are impossible to understand.

The Five Key Factors in Sun Tzu and Their Elemental Relationships
Key Factors	CLIMATE	GROUND	MISSION	COMMAND	METHODS
directions	north	south	center	east	west
character	courage	intelligence	caring	good faith	discipline
actions	foreseeing	remembering	being	analyzing	acting
senses	sight	taste	smell	hearing	touch
elements	water	earth	spirit	metal	fire
seasons	spring	autumn	between	winter	summer
conditions	rain	dry	clear	cold	hot
spies	surviving	local	doomed	inside	double

Mapping the Elements

The ancient Chinese developed several systems for mapping their five elements to illustrate the key relationships among them. Ancient diagramming started with divination, which was the main purpose of the I Ching (Yijing), or "book of changes." The I Ching created a special way to decipher the universe that incorporated three parts: xiang (images), shu (numbers), and li (meanings). The original diagrams for divination were called yao. These methods of diagramming were later known in the Xiangshu (image numbers) school as tu (diagrams).

The most basic diagram comes from the points of the compass

. The five elements are associated with the four cardinal points plus the center of the compass. Sun Tzu used this same compass arrangement, but the center of his system was "mission" rather than "earth." (Note: This diagram shows today's "After Heaven" arrangement while Sun Tzu used the "Before Heaven" arrangement explained in other articles on this site.)

The Five Elements were also arranged in a circle to show the "Creation Cycle" as a pentagram. Water creates wood by growing trees. Wood creates fire. Fire creates earth by transforming wood to ash. Earth creates metal, which is why metal is mined from the earth. Metal creates water, as we can see by condensation on metal surfaces. Sun Tzu used different elements, but he adopted this same pattern of one element creating or transforming from one to another.

There is another common mapping of the Five Elements that is important in Sun Tzu's work. This is the "Destruction Cycle" as a five-pointed star pattern. Water destroys fire. Fire destroys metal by melting it. Metal destroys wood by cutting it. Wood destroys earth by transforming it to wood through its roots. Earth destroys water by absorbing it. When Sun Tzu's elements are arranged in the Creation Cycle, as similar star emerges when you create the cycle whereby one element destroys or controls another.

Interestingly, Sun Tzu use the previous two maps in other ways. The "creation" map is used to show to flow of resources and costs from one element to another and it reverse to show the flow of rewards. The "destruction" map is used to show the flow of information (and the types of "spies") and its reverse to show the most common mistakes in using the elements.

Except for the flow of information, which is covered in detail in his chapter on "Using Spies," most of these patterns are referenced only generally because Sun Tzu expected his readers to be familiar with them and their use.

The Bagua (Eight Ways)

Before-Heaven Bagua: The original form,

said to come from markings on a tortoise shell, shows each element with its opposite (yinyang). The symbols are from the I-Ching (Yijing).

Probably the best-known diagram in Chinese culture is the Bagua. The Bagua (ba gua literally means "eight ways" or "eight directions") is one of the oldest forms in this Chinese tradition. Its earliest form dates back almost 5,000 years. It is the foundation of the I Ching (Yijing), or Book of Changes. It is considered to be a symbol of good luck, and eight is the luckiest number.

The earlier "Before Heaven" form of the diagram shows each of eight elements arranged opposed to its opposite. Today this form is most commonly associated with various schools of Tai Chi. It is also closely associated with Taoism. This is the form that Sun Tzu used in designing his system. All the elements in the "Before Heaven" form—heaven, earth, fire, water, lake, mountain, wood, thunder—are used either directly or as symbols in the text.

The After-Heaven Bagua are an unbalanced arrangement of the same elements. This arrangement is meant to reflect the dynamic universe.

Today, the Bagua is best known in its "After Heaven" form from Feng Shui, the Chinese art of creating harmonious living spaces. From this, you can see how positions have changed. Though it has many forms, the basic purpose of the Bagua is to show relationships between natural elements. In Feng Shui, these Bagua relationships include colors and areas of your life such as career, marriage, wealth, children, and so on. The eight sides also connect with eight trigrams (of the 64) in the I Ching.

Sun Tzu's Diagrams

The Compass/Cycle Diagram: This Institute diagram fuses two original Chinese diagrams: the Element Compass and the Creation Cycle. Sun Tzu's system has eight external elements like the Bagua.

The Armillary Diagram: The Institute's more recent map captures the yinyang and cyclical relationship of the elements. One ring represents the climate/ground cycle, another the command/methods cycle, and the outer ring the Progress Cycle. The arrow represents the direction and focus created by mission.

Sun Tzu's basic arrangement of the elements defining a position and the steps to advancing a position combine the earliest forms of mapping into a specialized version of the ancient Bagua. If we map Sun Tzu's system to the "Before Heaven" form of the Bagua, with heaven in the north and the earth in the south, these relationships are consistent with Sun Tzu's model of climate in the north and ground in the south. The main difference in Sun Tzu's version is that the natural forces of "water" and "fire" (from the "Before Heaven" Bagua) are replaced with the "commander" and "methods" (see diagrams). Layers of connections often shown around the Bagua are how ancient Chinese scientists understood the deep connections in the natural order, illustrated in the first two charts above.

For Sun Tzu, fire and water were opposites, but not complementary opposites because one did not generate the other. For Sun Tzu, the idea of complementary opposites was the key to understanding all systems. Systems existed as a balance of complementary opposites. While fire is associated with methods, it is more accurate to say that it is associated with positioning, the skill that connects methods with the earth. Fire doesn't create metal directly, but it creates metal by smelting rock (earth). Metal is symbolic of leadership, but more precisely, knowledge. Metal creates fire by striking it against a rock (earth), but the key is knowing the right type of rock. As you can see, this system is quite precise and its relationships are comprehensive, but the only reason to explore them all is to better understand the original text, not Sun Tzu's system itself.

Though Sun Tzu almost certainly knew of some form of the Bagua in its "Before Heaven" form, he does not use all direct basis for his work. The elements are used symbolically, but some are very important while others are relatively minor. Thunder, for example, is seldom used, and then symbolically to emphasize the obvious knowledge used by vision (known as aim). Water is symbolic of change, but lakes are symbols for hidden or secret changes. Woods are a minor symbol, used as a characteristic of ground, primarily representing stability. its elements as any

The diagrams that reflect Sun Tzu's model are used in our live seminars and seminar videos, and are explained in more detail in our Amazing Secrets book and seminars. Sun Tzu's method of using diagrams defines him as a pragmatist rather than a philosopher. He was more interested in the real workings of the world than any "ideal" patterns behind it.

Translation Challenges

There are many hurdles to creating an accurate translation of Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Many of these hurdles are unique.

First, ancient Chinese is a conceptual language, not a spoken language. This means that its characters cannot be properly understood as verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and so on, as can words in other written languages. Ancient Chinese characters represent general concepts that can be translated in an extremely wide variety of ways.

While we start with a given set of characters making up Sun Tzu's The Art of War, there is still a serious question about what each of those characters means, or rather, what each character meant in Sun Tzu's era. As would be expected over long periods of time, the meaning of specific Chinese characters has shifted. Some of the most frequent mistakes in translation arise from the reversal of meaning from semantic drift.

Sun Tzu took a very scientific approach to his work. He carefully defined his terms throughout. In one sense, the entire work might be considered a definition of conceptual ideas and the formal relationships among those concepts. Unfortunately, most translators pay much less attention to Sun Tzu's definitions than the Chinese dictionary's.

The final reason that translation is difficult is that the text was written in a kind of code. Much of Sun Tzu's writing refers to a scientific system of diagrams and analogies used by the Chinese in classical science. Just as modern poetry uses metaphors, ancient Chinese relied upon the many connections in this system to express complicated ideas without having to explain them in detail. No translator was aware of this system until my lectures and research revealed it. Now it is recognized around the world.

A Conceptual Language

When we say that ancient Chinese is a conceptual language, we mean not only that it doesn't represent the sounds of a spoken tongue, but that it doesn't even represent the parts of speech we use in a spoken language. This means that the characters of ancient Chinese cannot even be properly understood as verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and so on, as can words in other written languages.

Ancient Chinese characters represent general concepts. The same character is used for all parts of speech. So the character

(bing) can be translated as a noun—"an army," "a soldier," "war," or "competition"—or an adjective—"military," "martial," "competitive"—or as a verb—"to make war," "to soldier," "to compete," and so on. This gives the translator a wide choice of possible meanings.

Because writing ideograms with a metal stylus on bamboo was time-consuming, many shades of meaning were condensed into a single character. In this regard, ancient Chinese is regarded as poetic because, as in modern poetry, a single idea or word symbolized or encapsulated many related ideas. A character took its specific meaning from its primitive parts, from its use with other characters, from its use earlier in the work, from its use in other works, and from the larger context of Chinese culture.

With such a broad array of possible interpretations, much of the intended meaning of a phrase comes from its larger context. Within the work, phrases, blocks, and chapters were carefully arranged. This organization provided additional context and meaning, especially when the writer used strict patterns in arranging his material as Sun Tzu did. Thus, each phrase of ancient Chinese becomes more like a single line in a mathematical proof. Taking it out of context can destroy its meaning. For example, although I can generally translate the concepts in the phrase

Back

walls

do not

oppose,

we need a larger context to get the point. This is the context of the work itself, the specific chapter, block, and verse. The most important context is that of classical Chinese science and its many conventions, which Sun Tzu relied upon heavily in creating his system.

The Meaning of Characters

While we start with a given set of characters making up Sun Tzu's The Art of War, there is still a serious question about what each of those character means, or rather, what each character meant in Sun Tzu's era. As would be expected over long periods of time, there has been semantic drift. This means that the meaning of a specific character naturally changes over time as spoken words do.

This drift over thousands of years is serious because one of the more common changes is the reversal of meaning. We can see this drift in our own era, as in the slang meaning "bad" coming closer to the meaning of "good."

Too many translators used the modern meanings of the characters, which depart in many ways from the concepts Sun Tzu meant when he wrote. One of the most common errors in translating individual Chinese characters is using modern meanings as opposed to their meanings in Sun Tzu's era.

We should, however, point out that the meaning of the Chinese written language is more stable than that of Western languages. Written English from just eight hundred years ago is unintelligible to modern readers (read Chaucer). This may be because of the separation between the written language and the spoken one. Modern dictionaries are not a useful guide in translating Sun Tzu.

However, because of the use of modern dictionaries in translating Sun Tzu, many people think they are following Sun Tzu's advice when in fact they are doing just the opposite of what he taught. Many of the ancient Chinese characters have actually reversed their meaning over time. For example, one character that once meant "order" now means "chaos." Other characters actually mean both one thing and their opposite. For example, the ideogram for "stay" also means "leave," depending on the context. The idea of "complementary opposites" plays a key role, not only in Sun Tzu's The Art of War, but in all of Chinese science and philosophy. If you read all the popular translations, you discover that some of these reversals can create contradictory advice. Sun Tzu says one thing according to one translator and the opposite according to another translator.

The meaning of any set of Chinese characters comes largely from the context of the period. However, though he wrote about the same time as Lao Tzu developed the Tao Te Ching, Sun Tzu uses many key Chinese characters very differently. For example, he defined the key concept of tao very differently than did Lao Tzu. Lao Tzu considered the tao the spiritual essence of natural systems, while Sun Tzu used the term to mean the shared mission, goals, and values that hold an organization together. In many ways, Sun Tzu used his work to develop a specific vocabulary for the study of competitive organizations and strategic situations.

Even the way characters were written was different in Sun Tzu's era from modern Chinese. Chinese was originally written as detailed pictographs with a metal stylus on bamboo. During Sun Tzu's period, the fifth century BC, different areas of China even used different character forms. The First Emperor of Qin, who unified China in 221 BC, introduced the Qin brush script as the official writing, and from there on all the unified states had to use it in their affairs. The calligraphic style of this period is the "clerical script," or lishu, which is easily readable today, even to the uninitiated.

Today we rely upon Chinese researchers who compile Sun Tzu's work to choose the appropriate classical characters. It should be noted, however, that these are different than the reformed character set used in mainland China. You can see a sample of the Chinese text (as written today) with a transliteration and English sentence translation here.

Of course, the best method is to use Sun Tzu's definitions for characters, which he provides in detail in his work, rather than relying on dictionary definitions. Unfortunately, his definitions are usually too detailed and complex, making them unworkable in simple translation.

Sun Tzu's Approach

Fortunately, Sun Tzu took a very scientific approach to his work. He carefully defines his terms throughout the work and relied heavily on analogies and connections from the classical elements of Chinese science. In one sense, the entire work might be considered a definition of conceptual ideas and the formal relationships among those concepts. This is why we describe his work more as formulas than English sentences. As much as possible, every mention of a concept depends on former discussion of the same idea or upon the historical relationships within traditional Chinese philosophy.

For example, when we read

Sharp

soldiers

do not

attack,

we are tempted to think of "attack" in the English sense of the word, which is used interchangeably with other words such as "fight," "battle," "conflict," and so on. But Sun Tzu uses different characters in different ways for all these concepts, and he uses them rigorously and consistently. The above phrase wouldn't make sense if the character for "battle" was inserted into it, even though the meaning would be little changed in English. Even the term "sharp soldiers" has been previously defined at this point in the text (or, more precisely, its opposite, "dull soldiers").

These relationships become even more complicated when Sun Tzu refers to traditional connections in Chinese science. All the natural objects to which he refers in the text—lakes, thunder, forests, fire, metal, taste, music, and so on—have a place in the natural order as defined by Chinese tradition. Without understanding these connections, much of The Art of War will seem vague and poetic. We have written much more about these connections here.

The precision of Sun Tzu's usage regarding concepts and context is why we feel it is more accurate to describe his work as "formulas" rather than anything like English sentences. Compare the way he defines his terms, for example, to Euclid's Geometry, and you will see how similar the two works are in design and approach despite the difference of language.

While Sun Tzu wrote in a very precise manner, the hundreds of commentaries added to his work lack that same precision. Even worse, in English the translator's commentary is usually disguised as translation.

Sun Tzu wrote in a very precise and consistent way. The text of the thirteen chapters runs to something over thirteen thousand Chinese characters, by Griffith’s count. Ames wanted to add even more phrases to the original.

Any given phrase, like this one we have used before,

Sharp

soldiers

do not

attack,

can be interpreted in very different ways. Does it mean "Smart soldiers do not attack others" or "Do not attack smart soldiers"? Or does it mean both? The answer is found only through careful study of what Sun Tzu says about these two concepts, "attack" and "smart soldiers," elsewhere in his work.

Sun Tzu's System

The final reason that translation is difficult is that the text was written in a kind of code. Much of Sun Tzu's writing refers to diagrams and analogies used by the Chinese in classical science. Just as modern poetry uses metaphors, ancient Chinese relied upon the many connections in this system to express complicated ideas without having to explain them in detail.

Sun Tzu's system is less about specific concepts themselves than it is about their relationships with each other. It is less about individual actions than it is about the larger processes in which those actions play a small role. The Art of War itself doesn't describe these processes in detail, referring as it does to the classical models.

Ancient Chinese science had a system of diagramming that captures relationships and processes. People today may be familiar with Chinese nature diagrams from feng-shui. The Art of War doesn't describe this model itself. The model comes only from studying Chinese culture and history.

Almost all those who have translated Sun Tzu's The Art of War are unaware that this system even exists. The connection between this ancient system and Sun Tzu wasn't made until I began diagramming Sun Tzu's system as part of his lectures and writing. It was an audience member who pointed out the connection between his diagrams of Sun Tzu and the ancient Bagua of Chinese science.

It takes an entire book to describe all the relationships in this diagram and their relationships to Sun Tzu's system. I created such a work; he replaced the classical elements in traditional diagrams with the elements that Sun Tzu describes, creating the key to transforming a collection of vague aphorisms into a rigorous system. He explained this diagramming first in his award-winning Amazing Secrets book and later in his training seminars.

Common Translation Errors

There are five common errors in translation.

Getting concepts backward: There are not one but two ways that translators invert Sun Tzu's meaning. First, translators use modern dictionaries that don't take into account semantic drift. Second, and much more commonly, translators take what Sun Tzu wrote and decide that Sun Tzu meant it to apply to enemy forces rather than your own.

Missing by an inch: There are hundreds of examples of where a "slight" misreading of a single word completely confuses what Sun Tzu said. Even a "slight" mistranslation makes whole sections of the text impossible to interpret.

Commenting instead of translating: Most translators just can't help "explaining" Sun Tzu instead of simply translating him. The only problem with this is that they explain him incorrectly most of the time.

Choosing words with little meaning: Sun Tzu defines his own terms clearly. Yet translators like to choose vague words even when Sun Tzu's Bing-fa gets lost somewhere in the translation.

Saying it with flowers: Sun Tzu wrote simply and directly. Unfortunately, few translations are written as directly and clearly as the original. Many translations lapse into "fortune cookie" talk.

Taken together, all these problems make most translations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War difficult if not impossible to understand.

Reversing Concepts

How does a translator get Sun Tzu's advice backward? There are two ways. First, by using modern dictionaries that don't take into account semantic drift, which we discuss as one of the challenges in translating Sun Tzu. Second, and much more commonly, the translator takes what Sun Tzu wrote and decides that Sun Tzu meant it to apply to enemy forces rather than your own.

This happens frequently. It happens because Chinese is a conceptual language that doesn't spell out the subject of a sentence. Sun Tzu expected his readers to understand the context, having spent many years studying his scientific system.

In some translations of Sun Tzu, every chapter has at least one major reversal. For example, Chapter 3 of The Art of War begins with a litany extolling the virtues of unity. If you look at the original Chinese, the meaning is clear. "A nation that is united (one) is best. A nation that is broken is second-rate." This is pretty close to a character-by-character translation. Sun Tzu then says the same thing about an army, its divisions, and so on.

How could a translator mix this up? By deciding that Sun Tzu was talking about the enemy forces instead of your own!

In one translation, this section comes out:

"Preserving the enemy's state capital is best, destroying it is second best. Preserving their army is best, destroying it is second best..." (Note: The original Chinese has nothing about "preserving" in it. It was added by the translator for "clarity.")

What? How did the translator decide that this section was about the enemy? Because the next section of the text talks about the goal of getting the enemy to surrender rather than beating him in a battle. The translator decided that this following section provided the context for the beginning of the chapter.

If the translator had spent some time studying Sun Tzu, he would have known that unity is an overarching theme of Sun Tzu, and that he defines unity, not size, as the source of competitive strength. We get others to surrender without a fight by showing them a united front. Parts of this theme are introduced in Chapter 1, but much of it is explained in Chapter 3. If you get the first stanza wrong, you will never understand what Sun Tzu is talking about in this chapter. Worse, you create contradictions that cannot be resolved.

If destroying an enemy's forces is second best, why does Sun Tzu devote a whole chapter to the use of fire in burning camps and armies? Sun Tzu wasn't against destroying opposing forces. He was against getting into costly battles with them. Unity—keeping your forces together—is one way you eliminate the need for those battles.

Sun Tzu is like mathematics. If you get the basic premises wrong, everything falls apart.

If this were the only place where translators were confused about when statements apply to the enemy, it wouldn't be that bad, but the reality is that this kind of thing happens in every translation—all the time. There are examples in almost every chapter. No wonder people think Sun Tzu is confusing.

Defective Part of a Whole

There are hundreds of examples of where a "slight" misreading of a single word completely confuses what Sun Tzu said. Even a "slight" mistranslation makes whole sections of the text impossible to interpret. Each Chinese character has a whole array of meanings. We have similar problems in English with words having many different meanings, but in written ancient Chinese, variations of meaning are even greater and often more subtle. This creates difficulty—especially when the translators are not willing to spend the time necessary to master Sun Tzu's system.

We offer two examples. The first is the "persistent" mistake. This example is from Chapter 2 of one of the most popular older translations. The chapter deals with the cost of war and, in a larger context, the economics of success. Toward the end, this particular translation offers this quite remarkable statement:

"So the important thing in military operations is victory, not persistence."

Certainly victory is important, but how do we account for the statement that persistence is not important? For those who have studied Sun Tzu and know anything about competition, persistence is a critical element of success. In a later chapter, Sun Tzu says that you can win some battles and lose others, but, if you keep to his methods, over time you will win every war. This is because of the cumulative affect of persistence. Why would Sun Tzu ever say anything against persistence?

He didn't. The original Chinese says: "Make victories in war profitable; it is expensive if they last a long time." This is very much in keeping with the economic message of the chapter. So how did "persistence" get in there? The Chinese character for "long time" can also mean "persistence."

This particular case is an easy one. The translator could have gotten the context from the surrounding stanzas and was simply careless, using modern dictionaries instead of researching the historical meaning of the character.

Let us look at a second good example that literally makes a "mountain" out of a molehill. This is the only example taken from our "stylistic" comparison where translators almost all agree on the general meaning of the stanza, but important differences can still exist.

One translator translates the Chinese phrase from the end of Chapter 7, "

High

mound

do not

face ," as " Do not approach high mountains." Most translators choose the more practical "Do not face the high ground" as a general admonition against fighting uphill—that is, fighting against both the enemy and the natural forces of gravity, a concept supported in dozens of other places in the text.

This mistranslation is an interesting example because the topics of mountains and high ground are covered in so many other parts of the Bing-fa. The author almost has to reject any concept of consistency to come up with this translation. First, translating the character as "mountain" is odd since the whole issue of fighting in mountains is addressed extensively in Chapter 9, using the usual Chinese character (

) for "mountain." That section specifically says that while it is preferable not to battle in mountains, if you control the high ground you can win mountain battles. The same chapter also contains an extensive exposition on "dead-end" areas that should not be approached, and this list does not include "high mountains." Actually, the character

is also used in the same chapter in a short list of places you can defend. This makes sense if you understand it as "high ground," but how can you use an area as a defensive position if you cannot approach it?

This a great example of the type of "lazy" translation in which the translator's focus on individual characters instead of on Sun Tzu's entire system leads inevitably to missing the point of the text over and over again. These kinds of inconsistencies obviously do not bother the academics, but they are fatal if you want to understand Sun Tzu's methods.

Commentary in Translation

This is such a common category of mistranslation that it is hard to pick one example. If you look at our comparisons of different English translations to the Chinese, you can see that most translators just can't help "explaining" Sun Tzu instead of simply translating him. The only problem with this is that they explain him incorrectly most of the time. What they usually explain is some obvious, simple-minded interpretation of his method, but his methods are far from obvious and never simple-minded.

The worst examples are when a translator doesn't like Sun Tzu's advice and users his commentary to change it completely. One example comes at the end of Chapter 7, from another very popular translation. In the original, Sun Tzu says, "Leave an escape for a surrounded enemy." This is simple, straightforward advice. How is it translated? The same line from the popular translation:

"When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. This does not mean that the enemy is to be allowed to escape. The object is to make him believe that there is a road to safety, and thus prevent him fighting with the courage of despair."

Sun Tzu's contribution to this paragraph was the first line. The rest was the translator's invention. Sun Tzu said nothing about not letting the enemy escape. Indeed, the idea fails on simple logic. How can you leave an outlet for escape and not leave an outlet for escape? Do you paint a tunnel on a rock wall like they used to do in the Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons? Either there is a route for escape, which means people run away instead of fighting, or there isn't, which means they fight with the "courage of despair" (the translator's words, not Sun Tzu's). We can't have it both ways.

It is also typical of translators "helping" Sun Tzu along without understanding his system. This is about war, right? We can't let the enemy get away, right? So Sun Tzu must not have meant what he said. Let's explain around it.

In this case, Sun Tzu meant what he said. Leave a way out, if only an honorable and safe surrender. He consistently, throughout the work, is against battles to the death. Even when such battles are won, they are simply too costly. The translator saw a problem because he didn't understand Sun Tzu. Sun Tzu didn't care about killing people. He cared about controlling the ground and breaking apart opposition. You can do both of these without killing an army.

This kind of mistranslation is what gives the Sun Tzu's The Art of War a reputation for offering conflicting advice.

Vague, Meaningless Language

Sun Tzu defined his own terms clearly. His brevity was the succinctness of mathematics, not the abstraction of poetry. He used metaphors when they were the easiest way to express his ideas and because they were a well-defined part of traditional Chinese science and philosophy. Yet translators like their words to come out neat and tidy whenever possible. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, except that Sun Tzu's Bing-fa gets lost somewhere in the translation.

Many translators want their words to come out sounding "wise," even if it means departing from what Sun Tzu wrote. This does not help readers understand the text. For example, one translator writes at the end of Chapter 10:

"Thus, when one understands war moves, he does not go the wrong way, and when he takes action, he does not reach a dead end."

You have to admire how the words all come out, well, not as poetry, but poetry-like. It seems as though Sun Tzu was using the analogy of city traffic, with one-way streets and dead ends as metaphors. Of course, neither of these traffic ideas existed in his era nor in his philosophy. The line has little to do with what Sun Tzu actually wrote. He wrote, without analogy:

"You must know how to make war.
You can then act without confusion.
You can attempt anything (in Chinese: lift without limit)."

At first, like the first example, this seems to be a vague exhortation to study the methods of competition, but it is more than that. Each line is a summation of what has gone before. Sun Tzu, like many trainers today, often summarized important concepts at the end of a lesson. This phrase is an example. These three lines are important themes in Sun Tzu's previous text.

The first line goes back to the idea that winning in competition depends upon knowledge as much as action. If you understand his five factors model, half of it refers to the "information management" part of competition. This idea opposes the action, action, action view that too many people have about competition. This is especially important in this chapter, which gives prescriptions for using different types of field positions. In Sun Tzu's system, using any field position depends on the knowledge of the leader.

The next point of "acting without confusion" is also a common theme in Sun Tzu. In teaching specific uses of field position, he reminds us that there are specific rules that must be followed. We can act without confusion because the rules are set and invariable. We can't do what we feel like. Once we know our situation, we must then act precisely and instantly in the required manner. Only knowing the situation and the rules makes quick, decisive decisions possible.

Finally, this idea ends with another general theme: we can achieve anything. Sun Tzu consistently taught that we should not place limits on our goals. Positions are like stepping-stones; they are not ends unto themselves, but part of a continual path to larger and larger victories. This too is a critical idea. Earlier in the book, Sun Tzu says that we cannot know all the dangers in using arms, but we cannot know all the opportunities in using arms either. We cannot overlook opportunities because they are not what we planned.

Where are these three ideas in the "poetic" version about going the wrong way and dead ends? They are more or less completely lost. Translators must stay extremely close to the original text if they want to capture what Sun Tzu was really saying, especially if they haven't spent a few decades analyzing it.

Most translators don't realize how tightly written the original text was. Each line and each word was very carefully chosen in the original. The best thing a translator can do, even better than trying to understand the system, is to keep as close as humanly possible to the original words.

Silted, Flowery Language

Sun Tzu wrote simply and directly. The simplicity of his mathematical style is one of its virtues and one of the reasons his system is as useful today as it was when it was developed two and a half millennia ago. Unfortunately, few translations are written as directly and clearly as the original.

Many translations lapse into "fortune cookie" talk. This is easy to do because ancient Chinese is a conceptual language, which offers the translator a broad range of choices in expressing a particular idea. Fortune-cookie translating means choosing vague, flowery, and pretentious words such as "wisdom" and "benevolence" over more direct, common words such as "intelligence" and "caring." If you string together enough flowery phrases, the text sounds wise, even as its meaning becomes harder to understand.

Let us look at one example from another popular translation:

"Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downward."

Sounds almost biblical, doesn't it? We don't say things like "like unto" much any more. Nor do we say that something "hastens downward." There is technically nothing wrong with this translation, but it makes the text more difficult to understand. Modern English is more direct and straightforward and more like Sun Tzu's writing style in Chinese. His language wasn't convoluted, ornate, or flowery. There is no reason that Art of War translations should be.

What are the key ideas in this passage? Ground has measurable characteristics. High and low are opposite extremes on a spectrum measuring one important characteristic, that of elevation. For Sun Tzu, all such extremes can be evaluated in terms of emptiness (low) and fullness (high). Since all natural systems naturally move toward emptiness, we leverage the forces of nature when we move toward emptiness as well.

There is a special danger in translating precise formulas into convoluted phrases. When words are not used to translate characters consistently, precision is lost. In this case, using the terms "high places" and "downward" retains some of the meaning but loses the vital sense of direct opposites that you have in "high" versus "low" or, alternatively, "up" versus "down," which misses the whole point Sun Tzu is really making.

Of course, in some cases the language isn't the fault of the translator. Many of the translations available today were written more than seventy years ago (though not the example above). We can forgive translators who were writing in their own contemporary language. Some of the translations sold today were written more than seventy years ago. However, one of the most popular translations, Griffith's, probably has the most convoluted language and it wasn't written as long ago as others.

Comparing English Translation With Original Chinese

People are always surprised by the huge differences in different translations. To compare English Translations, we compare most of the popular translations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War to give you an idea of how translations vary.

To do this, we used the same section of the original Chinese text. We looked for a stanza that could be used as a standard benchmark, having the same general meaning in all the translations. We also looked for a verse that appeared for the most part in all Chinese sources.

To give you a variety of "flavors," we compare:

Clearbridge's translation, as the only award-winning translation
Sawyer's translation, as translation as an afterthought
"Clavell's" translation, as more words and less understanding
Griffith's translation, as odd language choices
Ames' translation, as one of the best
Cleary's translation, as adding a lot of commentary
Kaufman's translation, as an example of the worst
The Denma translation, as an example of the most obscure

The problem with most translated works is that readers do not have access to the source material, so they do not know what they are really getting. We have seen books that call themselves "Sun Tzu's Art of War" in which we could find no connection to Sun Tzu's original work at all. They were either completely invented by the authors or were from Chinese sources other than Sun Tzu. Fortunately, most of the versions we examine here are not nearly that bad.

A Standard Benchmark

To compare different translation styles, we looked for a simple stanza that is translated with the same general meaning by all translators. For this purpose, we chose the stanza that appears at the very end of Chapter 7, Armed Conflict. In this stanza, there is only one Chinese character that is translated a little differently (see below) in the various common popular translations.

(NOTE: What we call a "stanza" of Chinese ideograms is one block of characters from the original text. This block was originally written together, separated from other blocks by physical space. Each line is a phrase, usually written in modern Chinese with a "comma" or similar Western-style punctuation after each phrase.)

Comparing a stanza in which translators disagreed would have been easier and more entertaining. But it would make an objective comparison of actual translation styles useless. Our purpose here is not to debate or explain the true meaning of the text, no matter how critical that issue is. Our purpose is limited only to illustrating the various approaches used in translation, especially in regard to how language is used in translation. This topic touches on the difference between translation and explanation, but one advantage in seeing the original Chinese is that you can see that for yourself, at least in this small example.

There are several different traditional Chinese versions of Sun Tzu's The Art of War because of its complicated history in China and in translation. For our comparison, we use the newest compilation, which includes 20 to 40 percent more material than earlier fragmentary versions.

This is a good benchmark because there is only one minor disagreement about the meaning of a single character in this stanza. Clavell, Cleary, Denma, and Clearbridge translate the character

as "war" or "military." Griffith and Ames translate it as "troops." Both "war" and "troops" are legitimate, though "war," as in The

Art of

War itself, is more common. One other meaning of

is "soldier" or "soldiers." The word "troops" is more often shown as

, which can also mean "legion." Sawyer is inconsistent in his translation, translating

as "military" and "army," while translating

as "army" as well. We are very critical of translations that render different source words or characters into the same English word, because English offers plenty of alternatives.

Clearbridge's Translation

Full disclosure: This is the official Science of Strategy Institute version, written by myself, but with contributions from our trainers all over the world. The goal of our version is to give readers a better idea of what Sun Tzu wrote. In this sample, as in the entire book, we try to give the same weight to each phrase in the English as it has in the Chinese. We also try to translate the phrases as simply and directly as possible. We let the reader make his or her own assumptions about what Sun Tzu meant in terms of deeper meaning.

We do not create any false paragraphs or groupings of sentences. Instead we show each phrase as a line, as in a poem, and separate the block from the other blocks with a space as Sun Tzu did, making it a stanza—again as in English poetry.

Even in our stated goal of giving the reader insight into the original Chinese, we fall far short of capturing all the meanings in the original. The problem is that we offer only one-word English translations for each character. In reality, Chinese characters have an array of meanings that all play into interpreting the text. We originally tried to show all the different meanings in a character, but the character translation became unreadable. Instead, we tried to pick the meaning that fit best into the most common way that the line was translated. In cases where there are disagreements, we can only offer our humble opinion of what the best translation would be given the context and everything else Sun Tzu said.

Go to Strategy-Shop.com to see more on this version.

This is the last stanza of Chapter 7, Armed Conflict.

The Chinese Text	Clearbridge's Translation
Without invitation right correct’s banner,	Do not entice the enemy when their ranks are orderly.
Do not attack hall hall of formation,	You must not attack when their formations are solid.
Here govern transform one also;	This is how you master adaptation.
Make use war’s method,	You must follow these military rules.
High mound do not face,	Do not take a position facing high ground.
Back walls do not oppose,	Do not oppose those with their backs to the wall.
Pretend flee do not follow,	Do not follow those who pretend to flee.
Sharp soldiers do not attack,	Do not attack the enemy's strongest men.
Bait war do not feed,	Do not swallow the enemy's bait.
Returning home legion do not block,	Do not block an army that is headed home.
Encircling troops must watch-tower,	Leave an escape route for a surrounded army.
Poor pillage do not force,	Do not press a desperate foe.
Here use war’s method also.	This is the art of war.

Sawyer's Translation

Sawyer's Translation: The major strength of Sawyer's version, which was written in the nineties, is the academic research surrounding Sun Tzu and his era. The book includes over a hundred pages of footnotes and another hundred pages or so of extensive historical information. Unfortunately, this academic knowledge proves to be a mile wide and an inch deep, especially when it comes to the translation, which has more mistakes than many of the others. The author should have referred to a much better academic work, Ames' version, to get the meaning of the translation on track. Instead, the resulting work is almost a perfect example of how badly a translation can turn out when it is done by someone who doesn't understand how competition works. Imagine a Greek scholar with no knowledge of mathematics trying to translate Euclid. That is the result here.

Fortunately, the translation is almost an afterthought in this work. Wedged in the middle of the academic research—with seriously wrong-headed opinions about the meaning of Sun Tzu—and the voluminous footnotes, the translation itself is easy to overlook. Getting the research annotated, as opposed to the text correctly translated, was clearly Sawyer's mission.

Though the author keeps close to the weight of the original text, his choice of words is often strange, such as describing troops as "animated," or swallowing "an army acting as bait." (If you swallow a whole army, how could it be "bait"?) Often the translation misses the point entirely with its choice of words, such as the advice not to "approach high mountains" instead the more common and practical translation of not "facing the high ground."

Sawyer, while staying close to the original characters, also sometimes inexplicably adds a word or concept not in the original. For example, the Chinese character for "invader" is used in very specific ways in Sun Tzu, and Sawyer adds it here in the second-to-last line where it was not used in the original. The general sense of the translation is a sort of sloppiness in which consistency and accuracy simply don't matter.

Our Character Translation	Sawyer's Translation
Without invitation right correct’s banner,	Do not intercept well-ordered flags;
Do not attack hall hall of formation,	do not attack well-ordered formations.
Here govern transform one also;	This is the way to control changes. ***
Make use war’s method,	Thus the strategy for employing the military:
High mound do not face,	Do not approach high mountains;
Back walls do not oppose,	Do not confront those who have hills behind them.
Pretend flee do not follow,	Do not pursue feigned retreats.
Sharp soldiers do not attack,	Do not attack animated troops.
Bait war do not feed,	Do not swallow an army acting as bait.
Returning home legion do not block,	Do not obstruct an army retreating homeward.
Encircling troops must watch-tower,	If you besiege an army you must leave an outlet.
Poor pillage do not force,	Do not press an exhausted invader.
Here use war’s method also.	These are the strategies for employing the military.

Clavell's Translation

Clavell's Version: Although James Clavell did not do this translation himself (it is a version of an older translation by Giles), his name appears prominently on its cover, so we refer to it by his name.

This is the book for readers who want a little more explanation about what the nineteenth-century author thought Sun Tzu meant, mixed in with the text itself. The actual text and its sentences and paragraphs have little to do with the original text.

The goal of this work is to explain Sun Tzu's ideas. In most cases, this explanation was not offered by Sun Tzu himself. This stanza, for example, appears as a single group of characters in the original, but Clavell's translation starts it in the middle of one paragraph and combines several of the lines together into a single paragraph. This implies that Sun Tzu meant them to be taken together, but we don't know that. This translation cannot resist expanding and explaining the master's words well beyond anything Sun Tzu actually said. See at Barnes and Noble.com See at Amazon.com

Our Character Translation	Clavell's Translation
Without invitation right correct’s banner,	To refrain from intercepting an enemy whose banners are in perfect order,
Do not attack hall hall of formation,	to refrain from attacking an army drawn up in calm and confident array—
Here govern transform one also;	this is the art of studying circumstances.
Make use war’s method,	It is a military axiom...
High mound do not face,	not to advance uphill against the enemy,
Back walls do not oppose,	nor to oppose him when he comes down hill.
Pretend flee do not follow,	Do not pursue an enemy that simulates flight;
Sharp soldiers do not attack,	do not attack soldiers whose temperament is keen.
Bait war do not feed,	Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy.
Returning home legion do not block,	Do not interfere with an army that is returning home because a man whose heart is set on returning home will fight to the death against any attempt to block his way.
Encircling troops must watch-tower,	When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. This does not mean that the enemy should be allowed to escape. The object is to make him believe that there is a road to safety, and thus prevent his fighting with the courage of despair.
Poor pillage do not force,	For you should not press a desperate foe too hard.
Here use war’s method also.	Such is the art of warfare.

Griffith's Translation

Griffith's Translation: The only strength of Griffith's book, which was written in the middle of the twentieth century, is that the translator was himself a military general. The book includes good background about the life and historical times of Sun Tzu.

It is an excellent work if the reader wants The Art of War from the viewpoint of a military man. In his translation, Griffith keeps close to the phrases of the original without adding false paragraph breaks. He does sometimes combine phrases that Sun Tzu did not combine.

This translation makes many odd word choices. "Gobble," "thwart," and "at bay" are all examples. You can see his choice to translate the character for "war" as "troops" here.

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Our Character Translation	Griffith's Translation
Without invitation right correct’s banner,	They do not engage an enemy that is advancing with well-ordered banners
Do not attack hall hall of formation,	nor whose formations are in impressive army.
Here govern transform one also;	This is control of the factor of changing circumstances.
Make use war’s method,	Therefore, the art of employing troops is that
High mound do not face,	when the enemy occupies high ground, do not confront him;
Back walls do not oppose,	with his back resting on the hills, do no [sic] oppose him.
Pretend flee do not follow,	When he pretends to flee, do not pursue.
Sharp soldiers do not attack,	Do not attack his elite troops.
Bait war do not feed,	Do not gobble preferred baits.
Returning home legion do not block,	Do not thwart the enemy returning homewards.
Encircling troops must watch-tower,	To a surrounded enemy you must leave a way of escape.
Poor pillage do not force,	Do not press an enemy at bay.
Here use war’s method also.	This is the method of employing troops.

Ames' Translation

Ames’ Translation: The strength of Ames’ translation is in his work as a historian of the text. He explains in great detail the historical background of the text and its relation to other Chinese military and philosophical works. He also attempts to explain the differences between the Chinese and Western worldviews.

Ames also translates several smaller Chinese military texts that are not part of the standard text but which are either from earlier versions by the same author or related texts.

As a pure translator, Ames is my favorite translator now that I have had a chance to learn the Chinese characters. Unlike the translators of other popular versions, he translates very simply, adding little. He does break the text into paragraphs to create his own interpretation of the lines that Sun Tzu meant to be read together. In another way, he does keep closer to the Chinese phrase system than I do; he uses very long sentences, separating phrases by semicolons. This can make the text a little difficult to read, which is why I went to a sentence and stanza system to try to capture the phrases in my work. See at Barnes and Noble. See at Amazon.com.

Our Character Translation	Ames' Translation
Without invitation right correct's banner,	Do not intercept an enemy that is perfectly uniform in its array of banners;
Do not attack hall hall of formation,	do not launch the attack on an enemy that is full and disciplined in its formations.
Here govern transform one also;	This is the way to manage changing conditions.
Make use war ’s method,	Therefore, the art of using troops is this:
High mound do not face,	Do not attack an enemy that has the high ground;
Back walls do not oppose,	do not go against any enemy who has his back to a hill;
Pretend flee do not follow,	do not follow an enemy that feigns retreat;
Sharp soldiers do not attack,	do not attack the enemy's finest;
Bait war do not feed,	do not swallow the enemy's bait;
Returning home legion do not block,	do not obstruct an enemy that is returning home;
Encircling troops must watch-tower,	in surrounding the enemy, leave him a way out;
Poor pillage do not force,	do not oppress an enemy that is cornered.
Here use war’s method also.	This is the art of using troops.

Cleary's Translation

Cleary's Translation: Cleary mixes The Art of War text with commentaries by historical Chinese figures. His system is to give one passage from Sun Tzu and then one or more passages of commentary. In his introduction, he provides brief biographies of the various people whose commentaries he uses.

Unfortunately, my format for comparing the various translations doesn't capture his method well. I limit myself here to his translation of Sun Tzu's words.

If you see brevity as a virtue in translation, you should like this version. However, some of its lines, such as "Do not eat food for their soldiers," seem to miss Sun Tzu's point and actually contradict the text's advice elsewhere.

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Our Character Translation	Cleary's Translation
Without invitation right correct’s banner,	Avoiding confrontation with orderly ranks
Do not attack hall hall of formation,	and not attacking great formations
Here govern transform one also;	is mastering adaptation.
Make use war’s method,	So the rule for military operations is
High mound do not face,	not to face a high hill
Back grave do not oppose,	and not to oppose those with their backs to a hill.
Pretend flee do not follow,	Do not follow a feigned retreat.
Sharp soldiers do not attack,	Do not attack crack troops.
Bait war do not feed,	Do not eat food for their soldiers.
Returning home legion do not block,	Do not stop an army on its way home.
Encircling troops must watch-tower,	A surrounded army must be given a way out.
Poor pillage do not force,	Do not press a desperate army.
Here use war’s method also.	These are the rules of military operations.

Kaufman's Translation

Kaufman's Translation: This version is subtitled "The Definitive Interpretation of Sun Tzu's Classic," which, given the multilayered nature of the original Chinese, hits us as a strange statement to make. Kaufman is a martial arts expert who thinks that most other translations are too business-oriented. This is also a strange position, considering that none of the standard translations except for Gagliardi's were written by a businessperson.

Despite the claims of authenticity, this version seems to have the least respect for the original Chinese. It ignores whole phrases in the original, the specific meaning of the ideograms used, and the ordering and weight of the phrases. It is unlikely that the author was translating the same Chinese characters as other translators, despite our attempting to use a stanza that is complete in all major Chinese sources. Instead, he was likely working, probably without knowing it, from one of the less popular and less complete variants.

If you see brevity as a virtue in translation, you will not like this one. Though many phrases in the original are ignored completely, most are expanded and often extended with the author's own ideas. Of course, it is possible that his extensions relate in some way to the phrases we see as not translated, but it is difficult for us to make the connection.

The author also seems to prefer the choice of awkward words. Instead of simply saying, "never attack an enemy whose back is to a wall," he chooses the more cumbersome "whose back is to a barrier to retreat." His choices of words and ideas are certainly the furthest away from the convergence of the other translations. This gives this version a pidgin Chinese flavor.

If the Ames translation seems the most authoritative of the non-Gagliardi versions, this seems to us to least resemble the original.

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Our Character Translation	Kaufman's Translation
Without invitation right correct’s banner,	Never attack if you see the enemy in prime condition and his appearance is strong and steady.
Do not attack hall hall of formation,	His organization may be stronger than yours

Here govern transform one also;	and you will need to replan your strategy.
Make use war’s method,	*Not translated.*
High mound do not face,	Do not attack the enemy if he hold the high ground. It is important to consider your resources when this type of battle is indicated.
Back walls do not oppose,	Never attack an enemy when his back is against a barrier to retreat. He will fight with desperation and inflict serious damage if he sees no way out.
Pretend flee do not follow,	If he pretends to retreat, do not follow him unless you see his entire army moving away from you.
Sharp soldiers do not attack,	*Not translated.*
Bait war do not feed,	Never permit offerings of deception to force you into combat based on your overconfidence.
Returning home legion do not block,	If you encounter the enemy on his march home, do not attack. He is leaving and has submitted to you. If you attack when he is in retreat, he will have no alternative but to die for his honor. This type of warrior is exceedingly dangerous.
Encircling troops must watch-tower,	If you surround the enemy, you must see that he has a way out.
Poor pillage do not force,	If you press an enemy when he is trying to leave the area of battle, he will fight with desperation and you will encounter great loss regardless of your organization.
Here use war’s method also.	Understand these principles well. They are the foundation of the proper and intelligent manipulation of troops.

The Denma Translation

The Denma translation is one of the strangest, perhaps the most "fortune cookie" of all, in the sense of keeping the meaning vague. Either the version of the original Chinese the translators used was missing many lines that exist in all other translations, or they chose to ignore those lines. Other lines are shown out of their usual place in the text (see example below). The text also uses different section breaks (indicated by ***) than the other versions, so our sample stanza is a combination of two stanzas from their work.
The strength this work is that when a line of text is translated, it stays very close to the original. Reading it is like reading something closer to our character-by-character version than most English translations. In a few cases, the translators don't even translate the characters. For example, they refer to the Chinese character for "philosophy" or "way" as "Tao" (with a capital letter), making it seem as though Sun Tzu is referring to the great, unknowable Tao of Lao Tzu and the Taoists. In reality, Sun Tzu uses the word in a down-to-earth fashion, meaning the shared philosophy that unites a group of people.
The authors of this version make little attempt to "clarify" the meaning of the text in the way they translate it for the reader. In general, this creates a more authentic, if less readable, work than the many versions that extend and explain Sun Tzu rather than translating his words.
The Denma Art of War contains much more material than just the sparse translation. Following the translation itself is a section that contains three essays about the meaning and the time period of the text. The last section of the book is a commentary that emphasizes the philosophical rather than practical aspects of Sun Tzu.

Our Character Translation	Denma Translation
Without invitation right correct’s banner,	Do not engage well-ordered pennants.
Do not attack hall hall of formation,	Do not strike imposing formations.
Here govern transform one also;	This is ordering transformation. ***
Make use war’s method,	And so the method of employing the military---:
High mound do not face,	Do not face them when they are on a high hill.
Back walls do not oppose,	Do not go against them when their back is to a mound.
Pretend flee do not follow,	Do not pursue them when they feign defeat.
Sharp soldiers do not attack,	----(missing)----
Bait war do not feed,	----(missing)---
Returning home legion do not block,	Do not block soldiers returning home. ---(different order)---
Encircling troops must watch-tower,	Leave a way out for surrounded soldiers.
Poor pillage do not force,	---(missing)---
Here use war’s method also.	This is the method of employing the many.

luni, 17 mai 2010