On The Best Of The Three English Representations Of Sun Tzu's The Art Of War

This thesis makes a comparative cultural and linguistic study of the three most influential English representations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War from the perspective of the relevance theory. A tentative conclusion would be made about the best representation. Most of the Western readers learn about Sun Tzu's The Art of War through Giles' version and Griffith's version because of their great influence. However, due to various factors, there are many misinterpretations, and some important words and sentences are missing in their versions. The consequence of this situation should not be underestimated. All the research based on a false translation can only produce some misleading conclusions. The intention of this thesis is to take Lin's version as the best version, and then point out insufficiency and misinterpretation in Giles' and Griffith's English representations, and finally try to reduce their contorted meaning of original text of Sun Tzu's The Art of War.This MA paper elaborates on the translations of Sun Tzu's The Art of War and discusses the application of relevance theory to translation in six parts. The introduction presents an overall picture of the study of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, the objective and the organization of this thesis. The first chapter introduces the author, the content, the influence, the application, and the artistic features of this immortal cultural classic. The second chapter makes an overall introduction to the major English versions ever produced both at home and abroad and states the reasons of choosing these three versions over others for comparative study. Then, in chapter three, this thesis author (referred to as the Author later) will discuss the feasibility of the application of relevance theory to the translation of Sun Tzu's The Art of War and the related issues. The Author will then proceed to make a detailed comparative study of three widely-recognized English versions of Sun Tzu's The Art of War by Lionel Giles, Samuel B. Griffith, and Lin Wusun in chapter four. In the end, the paper will draw some conclusions.