abadidea
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"
✧✦Catherine✦✧@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
David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)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.
OwOday@whitequark @0xabad1dea they were also mostly ayn rand lovers I think?
Kirtai 🏳️⚧️
DJGummikuh@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"
@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.
Annelies Kamran, Ph.D.@DJGummikuh @0xabad1dea Clausewitz's On War is more like that (although even that isn't exactly deep!)
Dana Fried@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.)
CavyherdAnd also they don't have a reputation for being open to, you know, informed advice.
Duchamp Pérez@0xabad1dea So the war version of the Harvard Business Review then
João Tiago Rebelo (NAFO J-121)@hugoestr "Don't go to war and what to do when you really really have to" could be a title. @0xabad1dea
StoneBear 
@0xabad1dea ... so I got it right for audience, but not the purpose... Huh.
apophis@0xabad1dea even despite seeing this post first before the images this did Not prepare me for the contrast lol
Tinchocongruent@0xabad1dea do you know if the Thirty-Six Strategems or the Books of Swindles get the same treatment?
@tinchocongruent I’ve definitely seen kiddie editions of 36 stratagems. don’t know if I’ve seen Swindles
Dave Wilburn 
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.
@0xabad1dea oh, that's HILARIOUS. it looks like a children's book??
Robin Syl 🌸
@stonebear2 @0xabad1dea Well yeah, if you learn it in school. it is a classical text after all
Matúš Chochlík@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.
AT
Captain | 🏳️🌈 🇨🇦 
@at @0xabad1dea *hee hee" *not heehee*
Estel@0xabad1dea
if you brought the Chinese cover over to North America it would be titled like "My first Art of War"
if you brought the Chinese cover over to North America it would be titled like "My first Art of War"
@EverBeyondReach gotta get 'em started young on their very own Forever War
@0xabad1dea right before we start them on Star Wars: The Clone Wars
cliffle@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
@0xabad1dea yeah, I've noticed that -- I live in the SF area, where we got a lot of immigration from southern port cities around that time, and have a lot of these frozen names.
@cliffle it works the other way around too – why is Canada called "jia-na-da"? because if you asked someone in Shanghai in the 1800s to read 加拿大 they'd say ka-na-da!
@0xabad1dea alright, that's amazing and I had no idea.
cwicseolfor@0xabad1dea @cliffle Iiii did not know this one either. This is the sort of stuff that would have improved my retention back when I was studying formally!
@0xabad1dea standard Mandarin speakers are prone to confusing this with his lesser-known work on sculpting frozen blocks of water, 孙子冰法
(sorry, "attempting puns" falls between "saying hello" and "asking directions" in my language journey)
David JONES@0xabad1dea oh I just finished reading the freely available standard ebooks edition.
Volt4ire@0xabad1dea the English version should have used Corporate Memphis
GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)@0xabad1dea Is the Latin one also from Ali Express?
@GreenSkyOverMe yes. every single one of them is, the only book printed in Chinese which I found elsewhere is a big honking copy of Lord of the Rings and it doesn’t fit on this shelf