A Corpus-based Study On The English Translation Of Military Terms In The Art Of War

The Art of War by Sun Tzu is one of the most valuable Chinese treatises on military science. For ages, it has been called a "military classic", which is not only of significance in the history of Chinese military studies, but also occupies an important position in the world military history. However, the current researches on The Art of War often deviate from military use and tend to focus more on its applications to marketing, corporate interpersonal relationship and other non-military fields, while military function is less concerned. Although the studies on its English translation have increased in recent years, still military terms have not received sufficient attention.Based on Nida’s functional equivalence and the functionalists’ skopos theory, making reference to the classification of Military Terms published by Compilation and Translation Bureau of the Army under Northern Warlords and The Glossary of Ancient Military Terms in Dunhuang Bianwen studied by Chu Liangcai, the author of this thesis has constructed the Chinese-English parallel corpus, which consists of the original Chinese text, and two authoritative translated texts, namely, Lin Wusun’s and Samuel Griffith’s English versions of The Art of War. With the assistance of the data collected, a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches are adopted to compare and contrast the military terms in two English versions, analyze the appropriateness or accuracy in meaning and whether complying with military English register, and explore the translation strategies for the military terms.The major findings of this research are as follows:1. Lin Wusun and Griffith both concentrate on the connotation and function.2. For those Chinese military terms that have English equivalents, they both directly employ those English military terms and adopt various ways to express the same term according to the context.3. Lin Wusun applies different translation strategies to represent the information of source text and the cultural connotation accurately. In contrast, the version by Griffith complies with the military English register, but there exist many omissions and mistranslation.