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The Art of War is a work that I often hear recommended, but I seldom see endorsements for specific translations. Can anyone who is familiar with the work remar
by Kuiper 14y ago
The Art of War is a work that I often hear recommended, but I seldom see endorsements for specific translations. Can anyone who is familiar with the work remark on which translations are considered best? Bonus points for versions available as free ebooks, although I'm not averse to visiting my local library either.
- kathrynhough 14y agoOriginal author of the article here. I used the 1910 Lionel Giles translation.
- CodeMage 14y agoI own this one: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/0385292163 http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-War-Sun-Tzu/dp/0385292163 I liked the interjected additional content it includes, but there are people who hate it, so YMMV.
- rcamera 14y agoI have read The Art of War at least 12 times in the past few years, from multiple translations, and my favorite one is from Ralph D. Sawyer: http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Art-Of-War/dp/0813330858/ref=sr_1_39?ie=UTF8&qid=1338613639&sr=8-39 http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Art-Of-War/dp/0813330858/... Translations can be extremely different, most of them are pretty vague, and many are just plain wrong. The above one is known between scholars to be one of the best translations out there, if not the best. He also gives a very nice 46-pages-long introduction to the context of where the book was written, and about who Sun Tzu was. Other than that, there at the end of each chapter there are some good comments from him, explaining certain aspects of it, which is good for the first reading. I would stay away from the free ebooks/versions, I haven't yet found one with a good enough translation, and that causes issues like for example, the sixth chapter (one of the most important ones, in my opinion), which usually has a completely different interpretation in the free ones I've read, because of the bad translation.