|
Reading Challenges
Translation Problems
Translating Ancient Chinese
Common Translation Errors
Historic Cultural
Barriers
Problems with Translation
 In
a sense, no book written in the
conceptual ancient Chinese can be completely translated into English
prose sentences. The least of which is
that the original Chinese was more like mathematics than English sentences. Sun Tzu took a very scientific approach to his work,
but he wrote in terms that were well understood in his era but mysterious in ours.
We provide examples of five common errors in translation.
Translators often invert Sun
Tzu's meaning, make "slight" mistakes leading to complete confusion,
opine rather than translate, choose vague words,
and lapse into "fortune cookie" talk.
Different authors have very different approaches that can be seen
objectively when comparing each author's translation of the same stanza of the
original Chinese. This
comparison of popular versions is a good illustration of those differences.
|
