by Lionel Giles
THE SEVENTH VOLUME OF “Mémoires concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les mœurs, les usages, &c., des Chinois” [Memoirs concerning the history, sciences, arts, habits, customs, etc., of the Chinese; published at Paris in 1782] is devoted to the Art of War, and contains, amongst other treatises, “Les Treize Articles de Sun-tse” [The Thirteen Articles of Sun Tzu], translated from the Chinese by a Jesuit Father, Joseph Amiot. Père Amiot appears to have enjoyed no small reputation as a sinologue in his day, and the field of his labours was certainly extensive. But his so-called translation of Sun Tzu, if placed side by side with the original, is seen at once to be little better than an imposture. It contains a great deal that Sun Tzu did not write, and very little indeed of what he did. . . .
Throughout the nineteenth century, which saw a wonderful development in the study of Chinese literature, no translator ventured to tackle Sun Tzu, although his work was known to be highly valued in China as by far the oldest and best compendium of military science. It was not until the year 1905 that the first English translation, by Captain E. F. Calthrop, R.F.A., appeared at Tokyo under the title “Sonshi” (the Japanese form of Sun Tzu). Unfortunately, it was evident that the translator’s knowledge of Chinese was far too scanty to fit him to grapple with the manifold difficulties of Sun Tzu. He himself acknowledges that without the aid of two Japanese gentlemen “the accompanying translation would have been impossible.” We can only wonder, then, that with their help it should have been so excessively bad. It is not merely a question of downright blunders. . . . Omissions were frequent; hard passages were wilfully distorted or slurred over. . . .
From blemishes of this nature, at least, I believe that the present translation is free. It was not undertaken out of any inflated estimate of my own powers; but I could not help feeling that Sun Tzu 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. . . .
A few special features of the present volume may now be noticed. In the first place, the text has been cut up into numbered paragraphs, both in order to facilitate cross-reference and for the convenience of students generally. The division follows broadly that of Sun Hsing-yen’s edition, but I have sometimes found it desirable to join two or more of his paragraphs into one. [A] . . . feature borrowed from “The Chinese Classics” is the printing of text, translation and notes on the same page; the notes, however, are inserted, according to the Chinese method, immediately after the passages to which they refer. From the mass of native [Chinese] commentary my aim has been to extract the cream only. . . . Though constituting in itself an important branch of Chinese literature, very little commentary of this kind has hitherto been made directly accessible by translation.