That's an interesting coincidence since the "translator" Gary Gagliardi doesn't either. His theories of translation are quite unique. From an interview ( http:

That's an interesting coincidence since the "translator" Gary Gagliardi doesn't either. His theories of translation are quite unique. From an interview ( http://www.sonshi.com/gagliardi.html http://www.sonshi.com/gagliardi.html ) that was done with him: "Languages have always been my hobby and, at the time, I had spent about three years studying written Japanese, so I had some grounding in the Kanji character set that is shared with Chinese. However, I discovered that ancient Chinese is a language unto itself, written more conceptually (or poetically, as some prefer) than any modern spoken language. Fortunately, I also have a bit of a background in mathematics and physics and I immediately saw the similarities between The Art of War and classical Greek mathematics, especially Euclid (I also study ancient Greek). With my background in using Sun Tzu's concepts successfully in business competition with years of explaining these ideas to others, I was better positioned to interpret Sun Tzu's equations than someone who was a linguist alone. I started with the assumption that Sun Tzu didn't contradict himself so, if there was a contradiction in the translation, the problem was with the translation, not the original. I also had the advantage of working from a complete compilation of Sun Tzu various textual traditions created by the University of Taipei, so I had a more complete source document that many other English translators and a number of Chinese dictionaries on the Internet for doing research and on-line versions of other texts from the period (such as the Tao Te Ching)."