Lionel Giles
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Lionel Giles (1875 – 1958) was a Victorian scholar, translator and the son of British diplomat and sinologist, Herbert Giles. Lionel Giles served as Keeper of the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books, as well as Assistant Curator at the British Museum. The Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books was located at 14 Store Street, off Tottenham Court Road in London until 1998, when it was integrated into the Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC).
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[edit] The Art of War
Lionel Giles is most famous for his 1910 translation of The Art of War by Sun Tzu. His translation of The Art of War succeeded British officer E.F. Calthrop's 1905 and 1908 translations, and refuted large portions of Calthrop's work. In the Introduction, Giles writes:
It is not merely a question of downright blunders, from which none can hope to be wholly exempt. Omissions were frequent; hard passages were willfully distorted or slurred over. Such offenses are less pardonable. They would not be tolerated in any edition of a Latin or Greek classic, and a similar standard of honesty ought to be insisted upon in translations from Chinese.[1]
[edit] Sinology
Like many Victorian-era sinologists, Lionel Giles was primarily interested in classical Chinese literature, which Victorians approached as a branch of classics. Victorian sinologists contributed greatly to problems of textual transmission of the classics. The following quote shows Giles' attitude to the problem identifying the authors of ancient works like the Lieh Tzu, the Chuang Tzu and the Tao Te Ching, as well as taking some measure of the authenticity of the texts:
The extent of the actual mischief done by this "Burning of the Books " has been greatly exaggerated. Still, the mere attempt at such a holocaust gave a fine chance to the scholars of the later Han dynasty (A.D. 25-221), who seem to have enjoyed nothing so much as forging, if not the whole, at any rate portions, of the works of ancient authors. Some one even produced a treatise under the name of Lieh Tzu, a philosopher mentioned by Chuang Tzu, not seeing that the individual in question was a creation of Chuang Tzu's brain![2]
He used the Wade-Giles Romanization method of translation, pioneered by his father, Herbert Giles.
[edit] Translations
Lionel Giles prodigious translations include the works of: Sun Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lao Tzu, Mencius, and Confucius. The translations of Lionel Giles, and his father Herbert Giles, have had a fundamental impact on Western interpretation of Eastern philosophy.
- The Art of War (1910), originally published as The Art of War: The Oldest Military Treatise in the World
- The Analects of Confucius (1910), also known as the Analects or The Sayings of Confucius[3]
- The Sayings of Lao Tzu and Taoist Teachings (1912), now known as the Tao Te Ching[4]
- The Book of Mencius (1942), originally published as Wisdom of the East[5]
- The Life of Ch'iu Chin and The Lament On the Lady of the Ch'in[6]
- The Liexian Zhuan (1948), also known as Biographies of Immortals[7]
[edit] References
- ^ The Art of War - Special Edition, El Paso Norte Press, 2005 ISBN 0976072696
- ^ Giles, Lionel, tr. Taoist Teachings from the Book of Lieh-Tzŭ. London: Wisdom of the East. 1912
- ^ John Minford, Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations, Columbia University Press, 2000 ISBN 0231096771
- ^ Tao: The Way, El Paso Norte Press, 2007 ISBN 1934255130
- ^ Meaning in The Book of Mencius Encyclopedia Britannica
- ^ John Minford, Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations, Columbia University Press, 2000 ISBN 0231096771
- ^ Lionel Giles, Biographies of Immortals, AMS Press. ISBN 0-404-14478-0
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Works by Lionel Giles at Project Gutenberg
- Lionel Giles' Translation of the Tao Te Ching at sacred-texts [1]
- Lionel Giles' Translation from The Book of Lieh Tzu at sacred-texts [2]
- Lionel Giles' Collected Translations [3]
- A Gallery of Chinese Immortals translated by Lionel Giles
