The Art of War

To my brother Captain Valentine Giles, R.G. in the hope that a work 2400 years old may yet contain lessons worth consideration by the soldier of today this translation is affectionately dedicated.

Preface to the Project Gutenberg Etext Preface by Lionel Giles INTRODUCTION Sun Wu and his Book The Text of Sun Tzŭ The Commentators Appreciations of Sun Tzŭ Apologies for War Bibliography Chapter I. Laying plans Chapter II. Waging War Chapter III. Attack by Stratagem Chapter IV. Tactical Dispositions Chapter V. Energy Chapter VI. Weak Points and Strong Chapter VII Manœuvring Chapter VIII. Variation of Tactics Chapter IX. The Army on the March Chapter X. Terrain Chapter XI. The Nine Situations Chapter XII. The Attack by Fire Chapter XIII. The Use of Spies

When Lionel Giles began his translation of Sun Tzŭ’s _Art of War_, the work was virtually unknown in Europe. Its introduction to Europe began in 1782 when a French Jesuit Father living in China, Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy of it, and translated it into French. It was not a good translation because, according to Dr. Giles, "[I]t contains a great deal that Sun Tzŭ did not write, and very little indeed of what he did."

The first translation into English was published in 1905 in Tokyo by Capt. E. F. Calthrop, R.F.A. However, this translation is, in the words of Dr. Giles, "excessively bad." He goes further in this criticism: "It is not merely a question of downright blunders, from which none can hope to be wholly exempt. Omissions were frequent; hard passages were willfully distorted or slurred over. Such offenses are less pardonable. They would not be tolerated in any edition of a Latin or Greek classic, and a similar standard of honesty ought to be insisted upon in translations from Chinese." In 1908 a new edition of Capt. Calthrop’s translation was published in London. It was an improvement on the first—omissions filled up and numerous mistakes corrected—but new errors were created in the process. Dr. Giles, in justifying his translation, wrote: "It was not undertaken out of any inflated estimate of my own powers; but I could not help feeling that Sun Tzŭ deserved a better fate than had befallen him, and I knew that, at any rate, I could hardly fail to improve on the work of my predecessors."

Clearly, Dr. Giles’ work established much of the groundwork for the work of later translators who published their own editions. Of the later editions of the _Art of War_ I have examined; two feature Giles’ edited translation and notes, the other two present the same basic information from the ancient Chinese commentators found in the Giles edition. Of these four, Giles’ 1910 edition is the most scholarly and presents the reader an incredible amount of information concerning Sun Tzŭ’s text, much more than any other translation.

The Giles’ edition of the _Art of War_, as stated above, was a scholarly work. Dr. Giles was a leading sinologue at the time and an assistant in the Department of Oriental Printed Books and Manuscripts in the British Museum. Apparently he wanted to produce a definitive edition, superior to anything else that existed and perhaps something that would become a standard translation. It was the best translation available for 50 years. But apparently there was not much interest in Sun Tzŭ in English-speaking countries since it took the start of the Second World War to renew interest in his work. Several people published unsatisfactory English translations of Sun Tzŭ. In 1944, Dr. Giles’ translation was edited and published in the United States in a series of military science books. But it wasn’t until 1963 that a good English translation (by Samuel B. Griffith and still in print) was published that was an equal to Giles’ translation. While this translation is more lucid than Dr. Giles’ translation, it lacks his copious notes that make his so interesting.