Customer Reviews

The Art of War Plus The Ancient Chinese Revealed

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Gagliardi's book is useful in that it offers the original chinese text with an attempt to define each ideogram of the text. It's also readable. That's all for it's good points.

On the following points, I regard this work as inferior:
1. The language is designed to appeal to a certain readership, the businessman.
2. The author knows neither chinese, nor does he seem to be well-versed in ancient chinese culture and history, and this adversely affects the self-proclaimed "accuracy" of the translation.
3. Ancient commentaries are omitted.
4. He fails to identify the "popular translation" which contains the errors he describes. I'm unable to find those particular errors where he says in any of the other translations I have.

This is the second worst translation I have.

I have 17 editions of the Art of War and 13 different translations, including two in spanish, one in italian, and one in German. For truly scholarly english translations, I would recommend Roger T. Ames, or Ralph D. Sawyer's. They offer historical background on Ancient China and many other details...AND they know chinese.

For a more strategic treatment, I would recommend Samuel Griffith's work which contains a foreward by B.H. Liddel-Hart, and also a comparison to Mao Tse-Tungs work on Strategy.

If you are still antsy to purchase Gagliardi's "work," bear in mind: It's written to sell, not to educate. And from here on out, I find that I can NEVER trust a book review from Midwest Book Review. (Another glowing review can be found on the back of the book itself.)

I've just bought the book swayed by the award for translation. So what do I think?

Well they don't translate the same character by the same word. For example in the first chapter they translate gai (plan) as 'philosophy', when later on the same page they translate tao as 'philosophy', a translation i would dispute to begin with. Further down the page, I would prefer to translate the line saying that one's followers must not fear danger and dishonesty, as saying they must not fear their leader's betrayal and dishonesty.

In section 5 of chapter 1 the words characters meaning 'temple' are given in the chinese side of the page and not mentioned at all in the translation. In fact the whole of section 5 seems innacurate.

Ok I might well be wrong, I'm no scholar of Chinese, but is the author? Has he convinced people because it reads well (which it does) and because he insists on the accuracy of his version?

On the other hand, it is clear that a translation with chinese text with character translation is better than no chinese text at all. Sun Tzu is notoriously hard to translate, or to read in chinese for that matter.

While I can't recommend the text, and feel a bit 'done in' as it were, still the best thing for someone with no Chinese is to read lots of different English versions, and then look at a chinese version as supplied here and work it out yourself. This is a perfectly adequate version to start with.

This is an updated version of one of Mr. Gagliardi's earlier books, The Art of War: In Sun Tzu's Own Words, which was previously published in 1999.

HARDCOVER, FIRST EDITION (2003)

In this revised edition, Mr. Gagliardi has made a number of corrections to the original text. He has also greatly expanded his introductory section, with a new Foreword, entitled ACCURATE TRANSLATION. The core section consists of Mr. Gagliardi's Encarta translation of Sun Tzu's classic.

As discussed in the Foreword, Mr. Gagliardi used "the resources of the internet" (p. 9) to produce his translation. A more extensive description was given in the original edition (Gagliardi: 1999), which I will briefly quote:

"This translation was created out of a desire to create an English version that was completely faithful to the original text... (Gagliardi: 1999, inside overleaf)"

"Originally, I didn't plan to do a new translation of The Art of War itself. However, as I delved into the available translations, I discovered that each disagreed on Sun Tzu's meanings at essential points. In order to understand these conflicts, I went back to the Chinese text itself. Even for those who cannot read Chinese, the Internet makes it easy to translate the original Chinese characters... Using the context and other translations to select the appropriate meanings for each character, I created my own character-by-character translation." (Gagliardi: 1999, p. ix)

"Through these techniques, we preserve the ideas of Sun Tzu's Chinese in an English translation that comes as close as humanly possible to capturing Sun Tzu's own words." (Gagliardi: 1999, p. x)

The 1999 edition contained a large number of typographical errors, as well as translation errors. Many of these have been corrected in the revised edition. But the core text still has a number of problems, which I will address in more detail.

First off, I was surprised how much of the original text had been changed and edited in this new edition. I had expected some changes... but not this many. Back in 2000, when I wrote my first review of one of Mr. Gagliardi's books, I noted that his Encarta translation and word choice selections often appeared wrong. Given the large number of revisions Mr. Gagliardi has made in both the Chinese and English sections of this edition, I would say that my earlier comments were valid. This can be easily confirmed, simply by doing a line-by-line comparison of the 1999 and 2003 editions. Almost every page has some sort of change. Granted... some of the revisions are minor, such as simple typo corrections, and so forth. But some of them are surprisingly significant... including a few instances where the meaning of the stanza was changed! While there are a large number of re-written sentences in the English translation section, I was very surprised to see that Mr. Gagliardi has also edited and changed... and in a few instances even replaced or added, some of the Chinese characters (lexemes) used in the basic text! These changes are made without any explanation.

On his website, Mr. Gagliardi stresses the accuracy of his translation, noting "[he] was the first to focus his work exclusively on getting the text transmission completely accurate... "He also discusses this in his book (pp. 10-14, and back cover)

As he notes on pp. 12-13, Mr. Gagliardi used the compiled versions of the Chinese Source Texts as the basis for his translation. This searchable computer version was compiled in Taipei in 1970, and is known as the <Complete Version of Sun Tzu's Art of War for the National Defense Research Investigation Office>. It can be accessed via the internet, and as Mr. Gagliardi notes, it provided him a "new, more complete textual source for translation."

Mr. Gagliardi then points out on the back cover of his book, and inside the Foreword, that the problem with most translations is they contain "mistakes in meaning" (p. 11), and are "filled with inaccuracies, often actually reversing Sun Tzu's advice."

Unfortunately, Mr. Gagliardi's translation often qualifies for this same criticism.

***

Some examples of the text changes in the English Section:

A. In Chapter One, the Title has been revised, from:

"Planning" (Gagliardi: 1999, pp. vii and 3), to
"Analysis" (Gagliardi: 2003, pp. 7 and 17)

B. Also in Chapter One, the last stanza (Para 4, Line 18) has been revised, from:

"Don't pass it by." (Gagliardi: 1999, p. 9), to
"You cannot first signal your intentions." (Gagliardi: 2003, p, 23)

In the 1999 edition, Mr. Gagliardi mistranslated the Chinese character ZHUAN as "pass." This error led him to mistranslate the entire stanza; BU KE XIAN ZHUAN YE, as "Don't pass it by." A more correct reading of ZHUAN, in this lexeme coupling, is "transmit," which he has corrected in the 2003 revised edition.

C. In Chapter Two, Para 4, Line 7 has been revised, changing the meaning of the text, from:

"Take the enemy's strength from him by stealing away his supplies." (Gagliardi: 1999, p. 17), to
"Take the enemy's strength from him by stealing away his money." (Gagliardi: 2003, p. 33)

D. Another example of a text change which altered the meaning of a stanza can be found in Chapter Five, para 1, line 5. Here, the text was changed from:

"You must be able to encounter the enemy without being defeated." (Gagliardi: 1999, p. 37), to
"You must be able to sustain an enemy attack without being defeated." (Gagliardi: 2003, p. 51)

***

Some examples of the text changes in the Chinese Section:

Beginning with Chapter One, Mr. Gagliardi has selected different meanings for some of the single Chinese characters (lexemes), than the word choices he used in 1999. In fact, in Chapter One, he appears to have made seven word-choice changes: (i) two on p. 18, (ii) three on p. 20, (iii) one on p. 22, and (iv) one on p. 24

I will note, many of these are minor, and the revised single-word choices are valid alternatives. A select example of this is the Chinese character ZHE, appearing on p. 18 and 24. In the 1999 translation, Mr. Gagliardi used the English term "thing," to describe this character's meaning in the sentence. In the 2003 revision, he has changed this to read "one"... which is an odd choice, but valid; as it refers to the person or thing in the stanza.

In Chapter One, Mr. Gagliardi has also replaced eight of the Chinese characters with different lexemes (all appear on p. 24)! Specifically, these are the Chinese Characters SUAN (calculate), appearing seven times, and CI (here), appearing one time.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated occurrence. Similar revisions of the Chinese characters and the word-choice definitions used as the basis of Mr. Gagliardi's translation occur throughout the book.

For example, In Chapter Two, Mr. Gagliardi revised the word choice for sixteen of the lexemes (four on p. 26, two on p. 28, three on p. 30, and seven on p. 32), and replaced two of the Chinese characters (one on p. 30, and one on p. 32) with other characters. Using the text change on page 30 as an example, the entire stanza was revised as follows:

GUI MAI ZE BAI XING JIE

...which Mr. Gagliardi translates as "Costly Sell Then Hundred Family Exhaust," (Gagliardi: 1999, p. 17), to...

GUI MAI ZE CAI JIE

...which he translates as "Costly Sell Then Wealth Exhausted." (Gagliardi: 2003, p. 30)

In the above example, Mr. Gagliardi removed the coupled characters BAI XING, which he had used in 1999, and replaced them with the single-character CI, in the revised edition. While there may be some validity in doing this... it creates a departure from the "Standard Chinese Text" he was basing his translation on. All this is done without any explanation.

In Chapter Three, Mr. Gagliardi revised the word choice fifteen times (four on p. 34, four on p. 36, five on p. 38, and three on p. 40), and replaced six more of the Chinese characters (four on p. 34, one on p. 36, and one on p. 38) with other characters. Using the text change on page 34 as an example, two coupled stanza were revised as follows:

QUAN BING WEI SHANG
PO BING CI ZHI

... which Mr. Gagliardi translates as "Complete War Becomes Above, Broken War Second-Rate It" (Gagliardi: 1999, p. 20), was revised to read...

QUAN JUN WEI SHANG
PO JUN CI ZHI

... which Mr. Gagliardi translates as "Complete Army Becomes Above, Broken Army Second-Rate It" (Gagliardi: 2003, p. 34)

Unfortunately, revisions and changes occur in every chapter of the book. Since Mr. Gagliardi has no formal training or background in reading / translating Chinese, this comes as no surprise.

On page 13 of the Foreword, Mr. Gagliardi states "Though each Chinese character has an array of possible meanings, for the sake of readability we offer the one English word that best encapsulates the original sense of the Chinese character in context."

On the back cover of the book, Mr. Gagliardi tells us that he used "six steps to [create] a more accurate Art of War," and part of that process was to "make it complete by using the 1970 Taipei compilation of the main Chinese textual traditions instead of fragmentary sources... [by individually translating] each Chinese ideogram..." But the high degree of corrections that have had to be made to Mr. Gagliardi's book, along with the fact that he is adding and changing a large number of the Chinese lexemes he is using as the basis of his "award winning" translation, call into serious question the accuracy of his claims.

The book contains what the author asserts is the most accurate translation of Sun Tzu's work ever attempted. This description of the text is highly debatable, based on the merits of the text itself. This is certainly not a definitive work. And it certainly does not live up to Mr. Gagliardi's marketing claims of being the best English translation humanly possible (p. 14)

HARDCOVER, SECOND EDITION (2005)

In 2005, Mr. Gagliardi once again revised areas of his translation and restructured parts of the book. A summary of some of the changes is as follows:

The "Accurate Translation" Forword (pp. 9-14), which appeared in the 2003 edition, was re-written and replaced by an introduction, entitled "Award-Winning Translation" (pp. 9-12). In the new introduction, Mr. Gagliardi briefly mentions the changes in the book.

"In this second edition, we have made a number of improvements. The most obvious is the key topics index in the back of the book. However, in continually analyzing Sun Tzu's text, we found a few areas where we felt we could improve our translation, and we incorporated those changes into this new edition." (p. 12)

Some of these additional changes are helpful. For example, in the revised second edition, Mr. Gagliardi restructured the "Glossary of Key Chinese Terms" (pp. 154-157). While he downsized the list from 162 to 130 characters, he greatly improved its readability, by listing the chinese characters in descending alphabetical order. In addition, the two-page "Index of Topics" (pp. 158-159), which Mr. Gagliardi mentioned in his introduction, is also a welcome change.

Some of the changes are cosmetic. For example, in the revised second edition, they have added Sun Tzu's name to the front cover, above "The Art of War." This had been missing from the previous edition cover.

Some of the changes signifigantly diminish the translation. For example:


A. In Chapter Two, Block 2, line 12 has been revised, changing the meaning of the text, from:

"Using a huge army makes war very expensive to win." (Gagliardi: 2003, p. 27), to
"Using a huge army in battle success very expensive." (Gagliardi: 2005, p. 25)

Besides being gramatically incorect, the revised passage completely mistranslates the stanza.


B. In Chapter Six, Block 8, lines 14-15 have been revised, changing the meaning of the text, from:

"Your timing must be sudden... A few weeks determine your failure or success." (Gagliardi: 2003, p. 69), to
"Each day passes quickly... A month can decide your failure of success." (Gagliardi: 2005, p. 67)

The revision brings the English text closer in line to Mr. Gagliardi's opinion of the Chinse characters, which he lists on the preceding page. Unfortunately, he is mistranslating the entire set of characters. In my opinion, both of his versions are wrong.


C. In Chapter One, Block 4, lines 7 thru 16, the text has been completely replaced. The new text mistranslates the entire critical passage.

In summary: While the revised hardcover editions are somewhat better than the original edition, in many ways, Mr. Gagliardi's efforts continue to mirror Captain E. F. Calthrop, and his 1905 publication of SONSHI.

Whoever this Gary Gagliardi is, his mastery of the Chinese language leaves much to be desired; looking at his credentials, it sounds suspiciously as if he missed out mentioning one thing...hmmm, does he *know* Chinese? For one thing, translating the beautifully laconic ancient Chinese into brash staccato lines of poetry simply does not work; worse is his frequent mistranslations -- the character "ye" is often translated as "also", when it simply means "period" in an age where punctuation wasn't invented yet and ideogram characters are still used for sentence closure. Sun-Tzu here comes across as a livid boy scout master trying to rigorously hammer platitudes into our minds. There is this sneaking feeling that much of these "translations" are done using a computer software. Try Ames for a more accurate version. I'm very hard pushed to recommend this edition.

Being a long time fan, I already had a copy of this authors pre-ceeding paperpack on my shelves at home. I thought that this would be just a reissue of the same contents - however much to my delighted surprise, this version has further refined the translation, making it even more meaningful for me. Before I purchased this one - I compared it with similar titles on the shelf - and this one still stands head and shoulders above the rest.

The book offers a good visual presentation: by translating every chinese character individually on one side of the page, and displaying the meaning in English on the other facing page. That is about all the good things I have to say about this edition.

I am a native Chinese speaker, and so I'm picky at the accuracy of the translation. And I'm disappointed! The author doesn't seem to have demonstrated his command of the Chinese language. Breaking a sentence into individual characters and translating character by character may be a good start; however, compound words (words made up of two characters) are also broken apart; translation of each fragment is presented, which do not add up well at all to the original meaning of the compound word.

Second, I found full sentences being entirely mistranslated. For example the beginning verse of Chapter 3 on "Plan Strike":

Chinese: Fan Yong Bing Zhi Fa, Quan Guo Wei Shang, Po Guo Ci Zhi.
Translation: Everyone relies on the arts of war; a united nation is strong; a divided nation is weak.

If one would read further into the chapter, the meaning of this sentence would reveal as: among all strategies, to avoid battle and gain a country as whole is the superior strategy; to destroy the enemy's army is the inferior strategy.

Third: the book does not offer any background in the ancient warfare of China. Hence many terminologies specific to that time period (around 500-300 B.C.) are not made clear in the translated texts.

Ably translated into English by Gary Gagliardi, Sun Tzu's The Art of War Plus The Ancient Chinese Revealed is a supremely accurate bilingual edition of Sun Tzu's classic guide to military strategy. Each two-page spread features the translated lines into English on one side, and the Chinese idiograms with their meanings on the others, so that dedicated readers can readily understand the range of meaning in the original text. The definitive version of "The Art of War" for those English speakers who truly want to thoroughly understand it, the Clearbridge Publishing's edition of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War would make a welcome addition to any personal, academic, or public library collection.

The only translation that you can proudly give as a gift. It is just beautiful! You can also use this version of The Art of War to see all the inaccuracies in other translations. It shows each character of the Chinese characters with their English meanings. It includes a glossary at the back that explains the Chinese ideograms in more detail.

This ancient classic of 13 chapters was written over 2,500 years ago by the legendary Chinese general Sun Tzu. It is a must have for military buffs that enjoy reading about the tactics of the most succesful generals. It is rumored that Napoleon used a French translation of the Art of War to his advantage while conquering most of Europe, and he lost when he broke its principles.
The principles that are with in this ancient text can also be used in games of strategy, business conflicts, and the day to day battles of life.
Here are ten principles to give you a sample of the wisdom found in its pages:

Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance with out fighting.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Spies are the most important element in war, because upon them depends an army's ability to move.

All warfare is based on deception.

The general who wins a battle makes many calculations before the battle is fought.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from a prolonged war.

The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals.

In war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. (So they can retreat).

Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained, fight not unless the position is critical.

Taken as a whole this is a book of wisdom and principles on how to win. I rank it in my top ten books I have ever read. It is a must have for any home library. The is a very small book that is quick and easy to read.

very educational book.its very interesting that many of todays generals still use tactics learned from this translation