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A Standard Benchmark
Gagliardi's Translation
Sawyer's Translation
"Clavell's" Translation
Griffith's Translation
Ames' Translation
Cleary's Translation
Kaufman's Translation
The
Denma Translation
A Standard Benchmark
 To compare
different translation styles, we looked for a simple stanza that is translated with the same general meaning by all translators. For this purpose, we chose the stanza
that
appears at the very end of Chapter 7, Armed
Conflict. In this stanza, there is only one Chinese character that
is translated a little differently (see below) in
the various common popular translations.
(NOTE: What we call a "stanza" of
Chinese ideograms is one block of characters from the original text. This
block was originally written together, separated from other blocks by
physical space. Each line is a phrase, usually written in modern Chinese
with a "comma" or similar Western-style punctuation after each phrase.)
Comparing a stanza in which translators
disagreed would have been easier and more entertaining. But it would make
an objective comparison of actual translation styles useless. Our purpose
here is not to debate or explain the true meaning of the text, no matter how
critical that issue is. Our purpose is limited only to illustrating the
various approaches used in translation, especially in regard to how
language is used in translation. This topic touches on the difference
between translation and explanation, but one advantage in seeing the
original Chinese is that you can see that for yourself, at least in this
small example.
There are several different traditional
Chinese versions of Sun Tzu's The Art of War because of its complicated history
in China and in translation. For our comparison, we use the newest
compilation, which includes 20 to 40 percent more material than earlier
fragmentary versions.
This is a good benchmark because there is only one minor disagreement about the
meaning of a single character in this stanza. Clavell, Cleary, Denma, and
Gagliardi translate the character
as "war" or "military." Griffith and Ames translate it as
"troops." Both "war"
and "troops" are legitimate,
though "war," as in The
 Art
of War itself, is more common. One
other meaning of
is "soldier" or
"soldiers." The word "troops"
is more often shown as  , which can
also mean "legion." Sawyer is inconsistent in his
translation, translating
as "military" and "army," while translating
as "army" as well. We are very
critical of translations that render different source words or characters into
the same English word, because English offers plenty of alternatives.
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