Translated by Lionel Giles, 1910
The Art of War
Sun Tzu · thirteen chapters · Chinese text with pinyin and an English translation, set side by side
The thirteen chapters
Each chapter page carries the full Chinese text, the Giles translation, and the notes for that chapter.
Laying Plans
War is a matter of life and death for the state, so it begins with counting: five constant factors and seven questions.
Waging War
A long campaign empties the treasury and arms the enemy, so the skilled general feeds his army from the enemy's country.
Attack by Stratagem
The highest skill is not to win a hundred battles but to take the enemy whole — to break his resistance without fighting.
Tactical Dispositions
First make yourself impossible to defeat, then wait for the enemy to become possible to defeat.
Energy
The orthodox force engages; the extraordinary force wins. Momentum, not individual strength, decides the fight.
Weak Points and Strong
Be formless. Strike where the enemy has not prepared, and he can find nothing to strike in return.
Maneuvering
Turn the circuitous road into the direct one; the army that arrives first and rested wins the battle before it begins.
Variation of Tactics
Do not follow the rule for its own sake. Five roads are not to be taken, and five faults destroy a general.
The Army on the March
Read the ground, read the signs: dust, birds, quiet, and the way men stand all tell you what the enemy is about to do.
Terrain
Six kinds of ground, six ways to lose an army. Know the terrain, know the men, and the victory is whole.
The Nine Situations
Deep ground makes an army of one mind. Put men where there is no road back, says Sun Tzu, and they will hold.
The Attack by Fire
Fire serves the attack; anger does not serve the state. A kingdom destroyed cannot be restored.
The Use of Spies
Foreknowledge cannot be had from spirits or from calculation. It comes from people — five kinds of spies.
Sun Tzu wrote his thirteen chapters some twenty-five centuries ago, and they are still read as a manual for conflict of every kind. This edition prints the Chinese text with pinyin above each character, and sets Lionel Giles' 1910 English translation beside it paragraph by paragraph, with his notes attached to the sentences they explain.
How this edition is set
A dictionary behind every character
Tap any character in the Chinese text to see how it is read and open its full entry.
The Chinese commentary
Each chapter closes with the notes Chinese editions have always carried, printed in the original Chinese.
The translation readers still quote
Lionel Giles, keeper of Oriental books at the British Museum, published this version in 1910. It is still the English Art of War most often quoted.