Translation Challenges
Challenges Overview
A Conceptual Language
The Meaning of Characters
Sun
Tzu's Approach
Sun
Tzu's System
Sun Tzu's Approach
Fortunately, Sun Tzu took a very scientific approach to his work. He
carefully defines his terms throughout the work. However, he also relies 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.
The Sun Tzu System of Competition
 Gagliardi teaches that simply reading an English translation of the text of the book is very
misleading. (Even the Chinese translate the work into contemporary language.) After studying the original Chinese for years and
practicing the competitive methods it teaches for decades, he realized that the text was written in a
kind of
shorthand for those who already understood Sun Tzu's basic system of
strategy and how it used the framework of traditional Chinese philosophy.
More importantly, Gagliardi discovered that much of Sun Tzu's writing refers to diagrams
used by the Chinese in classical science. Sun Tzu's system is less about objects
than their relationships, and less about actions than processes. The
Chinese system of diagramming
captures relationships and processes. People today may be familiar
with Chinese nature diagrams from feng-shui. From
a close reading of Sun Tzu, Gagliardi replaced the classical elements in those 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.
The Key Is Understanding Sun Tzu's System!
 Gagliardi, in making his translation, had the previous academic work to build
on, but he had something more. He had first mastered Sun Tzu's system of
competition in real life. His success in business using Sun Tzu's system was as
real as Sun Tzu's own success on the battlefield. After that, translating the
system into English and into
different business disciplines was easy. After working on a variety
of translations, he was able to completely reconstruct Sun Tzu's system of
competition so that it can be used today.
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