Competitive Arenas:
Cleary's Translation: Cleary mixes The Art of War text with commentaries by historical Chinese figures. His system is to give one passage from Sun Tzu and then one or more passages of commentary. In his introduction, he provides brief biographies of the various people whose commentaries he uses.
Unfortunately, my format for comparing the various translations doesn't capture his method well. I limit myself here to his translation of Sun Tzu's words.
If you see brevity as a virtue in translation, you should like this version. However, some of its lines, such as "Do not eat food for their soldiers," seem to miss Sun Tzu's point and actually contradict the text's advice elsewhere.
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Our Character Translation | Cleary's Translation |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() | Avoiding confrontation with orderly ranks |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() | and not attacking great formations |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() | is mastering adaptation. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() | So the rule for military operations is |
| not to face a high hill |
| and not to oppose those with their backs to a hill. |
| Do not follow a feigned retreat. |
| Do not attack crack troops. |
| Do not eat food for their soldiers. |
| Do not stop an army on its way home. |
| A surrounded army must be given a way out. |
| Do not press a desperate army. |
| These are the rules of military operations. |