Three years of scrounging on Ali Express #classicalchinese #aliexpressfinds #shelfie
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Three years of scrounging on Ali Express #classicalchinese #aliexpressfinds #shelfie
The difference between my English and Chinese copies of The Art of War never stops being funny.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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The difference between my English and Chinese copies of The Art of War never stops being funny.
I was sailing around the BVIs on vacation with friends a couple weeks ago and we stopped into the resort on Peter Island for lunch. We took a quick stroll through the resort's store, and I noticed their book section had several copies of Sun Tzu among a bunch of other cringey titles.
I guess they felt the need to stock books for their overconfident white dude clientele.
I felt very attacked.
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The difference between my English and Chinese copies of The Art of War never stops being funny.
the cover design isn't at all inappropriate; the original intended audience was not (as many modern people suppose) experienced, battle-hardened lords who wanted to refine their technique to perfection, but twelve-year-olds who were gonna inherit daddy's army one day and needed it hammered into their heads "look Junior, I know that food has always just magically appeared on your plate without you thinking about where it came from, but if you don't take care of the logistics of feeding your army they will literally kill you and bring the enemy your head as a peace offering"
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the cover design isn't at all inappropriate; the original intended audience was not (as many modern people suppose) experienced, battle-hardened lords who wanted to refine their technique to perfection, but twelve-year-olds who were gonna inherit daddy's army one day and needed it hammered into their heads "look Junior, I know that food has always just magically appeared on your plate without you thinking about where it came from, but if you don't take care of the logistics of feeding your army they will literally kill you and bring the enemy your head as a peace offering"
@0xabad1dea i found it quite funny how many of silicon valley's biggest thinkers found the art of war spiritually profound. like, they're sort of the target audience but not for the reasons they think
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the cover design isn't at all inappropriate; the original intended audience was not (as many modern people suppose) experienced, battle-hardened lords who wanted to refine their technique to perfection, but twelve-year-olds who were gonna inherit daddy's army one day and needed it hammered into their heads "look Junior, I know that food has always just magically appeared on your plate without you thinking about where it came from, but if you don't take care of the logistics of feeding your army they will literally kill you and bring the enemy your head as a peace offering"
@0xabad1dea for real??
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@0xabad1dea i found it quite funny how many of silicon valley's biggest thinkers found the art of war spiritually profound. like, they're sort of the target audience but not for the reasons they think
I read it in my late teens and thought it didn’t contain anything that was non-obvious (aside from a few things that were just plain wrong). I assumed that was because it was written so long ago that everything in it was general knowledge by then, but understanding that it’s written for spoiled noble children makes a lot of sense.
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@0xabad1dea for real??
@DJGummikuh yes. the original Classical Chinese is pretty simple and straightforward (if it is your native idiom; it's very thou-sayest-thus to modern Chinese readers) and largely common sense, including "have you considered NOT going to war? it's usually the dumbest thing you could do"
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@DJGummikuh yes. the original Classical Chinese is pretty simple and straightforward (if it is your native idiom; it's very thou-sayest-thus to modern Chinese readers) and largely common sense, including "have you considered NOT going to war? it's usually the dumbest thing you could do"
@0xabad1dea very interesting! I never read Sun Tzu, but my illiterate understanding was always that this was a collection of wisdom of scholars for scholars.
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@DJGummikuh yes. the original Classical Chinese is pretty simple and straightforward (if it is your native idiom; it's very thou-sayest-thus to modern Chinese readers) and largely common sense, including "have you considered NOT going to war? it's usually the dumbest thing you could do"
@0xabad1dea @DJGummikuh and yet there are adults (mostly in the US government) who could still very much benefit from this advice.
(The counterpoint, I suppose, is that they're all spiritually twelve.)
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The difference between my English and Chinese copies of The Art of War never stops being funny.
@0xabad1dea oh, that's HILARIOUS. it looks like a children's book??
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The difference between my English and Chinese copies of The Art of War never stops being funny.
@0xabad1dea ROFL, I have the English one, now I *need* to get hold of the Chinese.
And having read the English version the Chinese cover looks way more appropriate. This is one of the most over-hyped books out there.
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the cover design isn't at all inappropriate; the original intended audience was not (as many modern people suppose) experienced, battle-hardened lords who wanted to refine their technique to perfection, but twelve-year-olds who were gonna inherit daddy's army one day and needed it hammered into their heads "look Junior, I know that food has always just magically appeared on your plate without you thinking about where it came from, but if you don't take care of the logistics of feeding your army they will literally kill you and bring the enemy your head as a peace offering"
@0xabad1dea So the war version of the Harvard Business Review then
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the cover design isn't at all inappropriate; the original intended audience was not (as many modern people suppose) experienced, battle-hardened lords who wanted to refine their technique to perfection, but twelve-year-olds who were gonna inherit daddy's army one day and needed it hammered into their heads "look Junior, I know that food has always just magically appeared on your plate without you thinking about where it came from, but if you don't take care of the logistics of feeding your army they will literally kill you and bring the enemy your head as a peace offering"
@0xabad1dea ... so I got it right for audience, but not the purpose... Huh.
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@0xabad1dea So the war version of the Harvard Business Review then
@hugoestr "Don't go to war and what to do when you really really have to" could be a title. @0xabad1dea
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The difference between my English and Chinese copies of The Art of War never stops being funny.
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The difference between my English and Chinese copies of The Art of War never stops being funny.
@0xabad1dea
if you brought the Chinese cover over to North America it would be titled like "My first Art of War" -
@0xabad1dea @DJGummikuh and yet there are adults (mostly in the US government) who could still very much benefit from this advice.
(The counterpoint, I suppose, is that they're all spiritually twelve.)
And also they don't have a reputation for being open to, you know, informed advice.
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@0xabad1dea very interesting! I never read Sun Tzu, but my illiterate understanding was always that this was a collection of wisdom of scholars for scholars.
@DJGummikuh @0xabad1dea Clausewitz's On War is more like that (although even that isn't exactly deep!)
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The difference between my English and Chinese copies of The Art of War never stops being funny.
@0xabad1dea ......well I was today years old when I realized that "Sun-tzu" on English covers is Sūnzǐ as in 孙子.
I think that cover makes even more sense given that the author can be literally translated as "grandson."
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@0xabad1dea ......well I was today years old when I realized that "Sun-tzu" on English covers is Sūnzǐ as in 孙子.
I think that cover makes even more sense given that the author can be literally translated as "grandson."
@cliffle English transcriptions of historical Chinese names are often frozen the way that someone from a southern port city would have pronounced it in the 1800s
