Translation Mistakes and Difficulties
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.