A Study On The English Translations Of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War In The 20th Century

Sun Tzu's The Art of War is the most important treatise in"the Seven Military Classics"of ancient China. It also wins high respects in the world. After 1980s, a world-wide upsurge of the study on Sun Tzu rose. It was based on the English translations of Sun Tzu that the western recognized this famous Chinese treatise. So we should have a research on the English translations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War in the 20th century.There were thirteen English versions of Sun Tzu up to the end of the 20th century. We can divide the history of the English translations on Sun Tzu as three periods. The first is the Start Period. The typical versions were produced by E. F. Calthrop and Lionel Giles at the beginning of the 20th century. The second is the Maturation Period. Among and after the World War II, the military field of US regarded Sun Tzu as a work on military strategy. The most fashionable translation of Sun Tzu by Samuel B. Griffith was published in 1963. The third is the Prosperity Period. The English world focused on the philological and cultural vision on Sun Tzu since 1980s. In a word, there were two apparently different visions when they translated Sun Tzu into English. One is the military vision. Another is the philological and cultural vision.This paper is devoted to the study on the English translations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War in the 20th century. The research on the earliest English version of Sun Tzu by Calthrop will be carried out to analyze the influence from Japanese military practice since the latter-day. The emphasis of this paper is the analyzing on different features between the English translations by Lionel Giles and Samuel B. Griffith. We will finally find that the difference of visions of the translations is in fact attributed to the dual features of Sun Tzu's The Art of War itself.