|
Translating Ancient Chinese
A Conceptual Language
The Meaning of Characters
Sun
Tzu's Approach
Sun
Tzu's System
Common Translation
Errors
Translating Ancient Chinese
There
are many hurdles to creating an accurate translation of Sun Tzu's The Art of
War. Many of these hurdles are unique.
First, ancient Chinese is a conceptual language, not a spoken language. This
means that its characters cannot be properly understood as verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and so
on, as can words in other written languages. Ancient Chinese characters
represent general concepts
that can be translated in an extremely wide variety of ways.
While we start with a given set of characters making up
Sun Tzu's The Art of War, there is still a serious question about what each of those characters
means, or rather, what each character meant in Sun Tzu's era. As would be expected over
long periods of time, the meaning of specific Chinese characters has shifted.
Some of the most frequent mistakes in translation arise from the reversal of
meaning from semantic drift.
Sun Tzu took a very scientific approach to his work. He
carefully defined his terms throughout. In one sense, the entire work
might be considered a definition of conceptual ideas and the formal
relationships among those concepts. Unfortunately, most translators pay much
less attention to Sun Tzu's definitions than the Chinese dictionary's.
The final reason that translation is difficult is that the text was written in a
kind of
code. Much of Sun Tzu's writing refers to a scientific system of diagrams
and analogies
used by the Chinese in classical science. Just as modern poetry uses metaphors,
ancient Chinese relied upon the many connections in this system to express
complicated ideas without having to explain them in detail. No translator was
aware of this system until Gary Gagliardi's lectures and research revealed it.
Now it is recognized around the world.
|
