善守者，藏于九地之下，善攻者，动于九天之上，故能自保而全胜也。

Ugh… It was tougher than i had hoped…

anyway, i directly tried to translate the sentence, let’s see what i got:

善 (shàn) means well/kind or good,

守 (shǒu) is guard,

and 者 (zhě ?) is roughly that which is…

So we get 善守者: That which guards well,

 

藏 (cáng) to hide conceal

于 (yú) is a connector/ preposition

九 (jiǔ) nine

地 (dì): place/ location (I suppose here ground would be a good translation)

之 (zhī) connector see the last post

下 (xià) bottom, under, down.

Sooo… That which guards well hides under the 9 places. My french book who is very poetic says:

He who excels at defence, hides deep under the nine folds of the earth;

Qui excelle à la defensive se cache au plus profond des 9 replis de la terre.

 

善 (shàn)  kind/good

攻 (gōng) attack

者 (zhě ?) as before.

We get: he who attacks well,

动 (dòng) move or act

于 (yú) is a connector/ preposition

九 (jiǔ) nine

天 (tiān) sky

之 (zhī) connector see the last post

上 (shàng)  top/upper part

He who attacks well, move/act at the top of the 9 skies ?

 

故 (gù) ancient/old; reason or because 

能 (néng)  ability/ capable of, can

自 (zì) certainly

保 (bǎo) protect/keep/ensure/guaranties (quite a lot of choices uh)

而 (ér) connector: and /and then 

全 (quán) complete/whole/entirely

胜 (shèng) win

地 (dì): place/ location.

This time i’m at a loss. The begining is probably: This is the reason why… (very loosely translated) he can certainly protect… Because of the connector here, there is a “second” sentence here and he wins completely… the 地 here makes no sense to me, is it suppose to mean “in any place”? That would give us

This is the reason why he can certainly protect and can win completely in any location.

This would make sense. To make it clearer, i’d like to focus on the first two part:

善守者，藏于九地之下 and

善攻者，动于九天之上.

 

He who defends well, hides below the 9 grounds,  he who attacks well, moves above the 9 skies.

 

While i would love to hear about why there are 9 skies and grounds, ( i haven’t found any explanation for it till now), this is classicaly something that derails the european reader. Luckily there are comments by 曹 操; (Cáo Cāo) you can read about him on the wikipedia article, basically he was an important figure during the period of the three kingdom and his son created the empire of wei. He is also a commenter of 孫 子 (Sūn Zǐ)’s work. About the matters at hand he said: to profit from the peculiarities of the terrain, that is hiding under the nine ground; using the variations of the climate to your profit, that is moving above the nine skies. While Li Quan seems to disagree with him, and continue his comment focusing on divination; one station after the divine palast correspond to the nine skies; two station after the divine palast correspond to the nine grounds. The earth, peacefull, is a place of strong stability; the sky, affected by revolution, is a sign of movement. Here revolution has to be read in the original sense, of circular movement, or period. Anyway i would rather talk about 曹 操‘s version, since i think it harbours some interesting thoughts:

 

Basicaly what it said is that, if being attacked, we have the choice of the place or field where the confrontation will take place, on the other side if we attack, we can’t choose where, but we can choose the timel. This is a more general thought even. To choose the right place when something or someone come to us, and to choose the right time to go to someone or to do something, that is, to me, 善守者，藏于九地之下，善攻者，动于九天之。

投之亡地然后存，陷之死地然后生。

Recently I stumbled upon this sentence. Since i was intrigued, i tried to quickly translate it through google language tools and babelfish. Since the translations made no sense whatsoever (try it by yourself, it’s rather funny), i tried harder to find out what it was. Googling for it send me to the baidu site, with some discussion on it that became my first lead, it seemed to be some citation from some chinese classic. After looking more into it, i got the impression that it was related to “the art of war” from Sun Zi. Luckily i got to talk with the person who had written the sentence and she confirmed that it was from the art of war, somewhere in chapter 11 (the one about the 9 types of location).

After i went home, i looked it up, but didn’t manage to find the exact sentence in my french version. Giving up on the “meta search” approach, i translated every part of the sentence. I’m still not sure if i got everything right (probably not) but:
投 (tóu) means throw, or to put oneself in (a situation…)
之 (zhī) is a connector similar to 的
亡地 (wáng dì) translate to “places of death”
然 (rán)
后 (hòu) after ? really not sure about that
存 (cún) means survive

Edit: 后 can also be written: 後 (traditional version?), then 然後 is actually something i had to learn back in the days and means afterward (danach oder anschließend, après)

Roughly: After being thrown into places of death, they survive …

陷 (xiàn) trap (-ped)
之 see above
死地 (sǐ dì) places of death (again, not sure about the difference between 死 and 亡, the translations i have seem to translate 亡地 into dangerous places, or situation périlleuse)
然後 (rán hòu) afterwards, after
生 (shēng) to live

Roughly: after being trapped in a place of death, they live (or try to?)

Let’s elaborate on the terrain types:

疾战则存，不疾战则亡者，为死地。
“An area in which one can only survive through fearless fighting and will definitely perish if one does not is called a death ground.”
” En terre d’anéantissement, une armée doit se battre avec l’énergie du desespoir ou périr.”

亡地 is not formally one of the 9 described battlegrounds. It might refer to the same type, but could also be 围地 (surrounded place) or 圮地 (treacherous ground?), which are also pretty desperate types.

I have hoping to find some interesting comments from other classics, but it looks like the content is too obvious to have drawn a lot of comment. Sun Zi elaborates in Question from the king of Wou: in case of being encircled, burn your chariots and supplies, shave(?) your heads, eat the cows to show that you don’t have anything else in mind but to defend yourself till death. Once ready attack the enemy from both side (doesn’t make sense, sucky translation :S ) etc
Then the king of Wu asked what he should do in case he is encircling the enemy. Sun Zi answer that in that case, you should use a lot of ruse. Don’t let him be aware that he is encircled, make some place an apparent escape route, hide your archers in good positions in range of the escape route. It is important to not fight an enemy who is in a 死地 since it is there where his combative spirit is at the highest.

Thanks to Tingting for this opportunity to learn a little bit of chinese, and to think again about writings of Sun Zi. I may continue this kind of entry, i’m thinking about talking on my personal favorite: 善守者，藏于九地之下，善攻者，动于九天之上，故能自保而全胜也。