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.
His 1910 translation of The Art of War succeeded an earlier attempt by a British officer named E.F. Calthrop in 1905. Publicly refuting large portions of Calthrop’s work, Giles writes in his introduction:
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.
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