This is the way the Sun Tzu was meant to be translated.
He had been mistranslated and interpreted over and over to the point that it was like a game of broken telephone.
The main difference between this and other translations is that this actually makes a lot of sense and can be applied. I remember reading other translations and almost invariably they had some passages that just didn't make any sense. They were meant more for quoting and learning some wisdom. And while technology of war certainly has good quotes and will make you wiser, it is first and foremost a book containing knowledge that is made to be applied. Even the translator's introduction is very interesting and enlightening.
Its a really good one and I highly recommend it.
OR
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![Sun Tzu The Technology of War: A Precise Translation to Give You a Clarified Battle Plan to Dominate 21st-Century Life by [Sun Tzu, Colin Thorne]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T1/images/I/510-wkXpT3L._SY346_.jpg)
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After further study needed to amend my original review - this version is more flawed than I first thought
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2016
After posting my original review, a commenter named Yongbing1 took issue with my opinion that other translations, including Ames and Griffith, were much better than Thorne’s, and in his defense cited the J.H. Huang translation as supporting Thorne’s superior translation. Being very familiar with the Huang translation this piqued my interest, so I took a deeper look into Thorne’s work and will need to update my original review.What I found is that Thorne appeared to rely heavily on the Huang translation in creating his own—to the point where I believe he should have been much more upfront about this fact. Yongbing1 is incorrect to say that J.H. Huang agrees with Mr. Thorne's translation; instead, Thorne simply copied Huang.Huang’s translation (which came out in the early 1990s) deviates significantly in some areas where there has generally been a consensus among Western and native Chinese speaking translators of the text. One quick example: in Chapter One (which would be Chapter Two in the Thorne text because he decided to rearrange the order the original compilers of the text established) Sun Tzu lays out his twelve deceptive strategies, one of which reads (in Chinese pinyin):nu er nao zhiAlmost every other translator renders the Chinese character “nu” as anger, and thus uses some variation of:“if they are angry, perturb them” (Sawyer)Huang, in contrast, believes this is a mistranslation, and renders the meaning of “nu” as having “high morale” and thus translates the same line:“if of high morale, depress them” (Huang)Now I don’t agree with Huang’s interpretation at all – if you accept this view it complicates later verses that use “nu” in a context that can only indicate a meaning of “anger” – but in his book’s notes he acknowledges the fact that most other translators have a different interpretation and at least makes an effort to lay out a case for why he believes his version is better. Thorne, coincidentally, also translates “nu” as high morale, but neither informs the reader that this translation is at odds with the general consensus of other versions nor cites the original idea as coming from Huang, not himself.As a hobby I have built a database that contains 19 English versions of Sun Tzu translations to compare and contrast, and have posted a copy of this verse from that database so you can judge for yourself. This is just one of many instances where Huang’s more controversial translation choices are simply copied by Thorne without acknowledgement. While Huang at least provides detailed notes to allow the reader to follow his logic and make up their own mind about these choices, Thorne simply passes these off as his own interpretations, without providing proper attribution or acknowledging the debate surrounding these translation choices.But whereas in reading Huang you get a sense that – even if you don’t agree with all of his translation choices – he at least possesses a deep understanding of the Chinese language and ancient Chinese culture, the same level of competence doesn’t seem to come through in Thorne’s work. In his introduction he tries to give a background to the meaning of one character, “yu,” by breaking the character into its component parts and then by telling a story from those component parts to show that other translators have misinterpreted the meaning of this character. He does this by claiming that “yu” is made up of the radicals for tiger, mouth, and a man, and thus the man is using his mouth to warn the village about a pending tiger attack. The problem is that while tiger and mouth are components of this character, what he interprets as “a man with a flattened head” is actually the character for “sky” or “heaven” (tian) – one of the most basic Chinese characters – thus invalidating his novel interpretation.At one point Sun Tzu, in trying to show the infinite variety of orthodox and unorthodox strategies, compares it to the fact that there are only five tones, but in combination they can produce endless sounds. Thorne claims that Sun Tzu is referring to the five tones that exist in modern Mandarin Chinese speech. This is most certainly not the case as modern Mandarin is derived from a northern Chinese dialect that was far outside the realm of Sun Tzu’s known world at the time (in both the spatial and temporal sense). Instead, Sun Tzu is referring to the five musical notes that make up the pentatonic scale that existed at the time of his writing, and he is implying that with only five notes the combinations can make endless varieties of music. Neither of these are catastrophic mistakes, but from an author who mocks previous Sun Tzu commentators for their lack of knowledge concerning the military and intellectual milieu of the Warring States period one expects a higher level of erudition. Thorne even criticizes Tang dynasty official Tu Mu for being neither a military expert or strategist and dismisses his views on Sun Tzu outright because he was writing from a period too far removed from the Warring States era to be trusted!With no shortage of viable translations of Sun Tzu available, any new translator needs to prove that his version is somehow superior to the previous efforts – some of which were done by highly esteemed Sinologists who back their work with careful scholarship, not misguided bravado. Unfortunately, I don’t believe Thorne’s work comes close to previous efforts. At the very least, if you want a contrarian interpretation of Sun Tzu I suggest picking up the actual Huang version which is a serious, albeit flawed effort. But if it comes to a choice between Thorne or Tu Mu I have made my choice: “I follow Tu Mu.”
Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2016
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