为什么”不可胜“的意思是反转的？你们能不能给我解释一下吗?

Question

bitterschnee · Answer

“意思是反转的”具体是指什么？

bitterschnee · Answer

@kungfumastershindo 不是的，“先为不可胜”的意思是“先创造（让敌人）不能战胜（我）的条件”。

bitterschnee · Answer

@kungfumastershindo If you defeat somebody, you win. These two are essentially the same, aren’t they?

不可胜 = others cannot defeat you = others cannot win a war against you

bitterschnee · Answer

@kungfumastershindo There is no one single correct interpretation of Classical Chinese texts, especially those written before the Han dynasty. As long as your interpretation is logical and can be consistently applied to texts with similar usages, it is a plausible one. But I don’t believe that interpreting 不可胜 as “cannot triumph over others” makes sense here in this particular text. So most interpreters agreed on the other way around. It’s like debugging a chunk of code, if one solution doesn’t work try the other possibilities.

ChinglishTeadent · Answer

@kungfumastershindo 
不 = un-
可 = -able
胜 = defeat (vt. e.g. 我胜了他 = I defeated him.)

不可胜 = undefeatable (not "unable to defeat others")

ChinglishTeadent · Answer

@kungfumastershindo Well, the truth is, you can't, nor can most of the Chinese people. Classical Chinese is just too "economical" in wording, which is why there are a lot of disputes today (even among experts) over the real meaning of sentences found in ancient books. 孙子兵法 was written about 25 centries ago. There are words and expressions that only had one meaning at the time but carried many other meanings and usages in later development, so a book might be clear and concise when it first appeared but become ambiguous two thousand years later. What philologists usually do is compare the book with other books written in the same historical period, conducting both corpus study and context analysis, and thus deciphering what the author actually intended to say. This, apparently, is beyond the capacity of common readers, so most of us will just accept what philologists tell us and question only when their explanation doesn't seem to make sense...

ChinglishTeadent · Answer

@kungfumastershindo I'm not sure if there's a scientific way to solve this problem, but my personal experience tells me that ambiguity can become smaller with your analysis of the context. When you look at a word (mostly a single Chinese character, in ancient books), it normally has more than one meaning to you, sometimes over ten meanings, but if you look at it in a sentence, the possibilities will largely decrease, and if ambiguity still exists, study the whole paragraph/article/book. Seen in a big context, usually a word will make sense only with one of its meanings. Occasionally, of course, there are still two or more possibilities. Then you'll have to consult (works of) philologists, who themselves may be debating too about this ambiguous word :)

ChinglishTeadent · Answer

@kungfumastershindo Sorry, I have had no specific training of Classical Chinese, and my knowledge of it is no more than that of most other Chinese...

pekomon · Answer

不=not
“可胜” means that someone can success.
add 不 in this sentence.
“不可胜” means that someone can not success.

chris6911 · Answer

“可胜”means that someone can success.if you put“不”in front of it,it means that someone can't success.“不”是对它后面部分的否定，例如“不可以”中的“不”就是对“可以”的否定。

chris6911 · Answer

@kungfumastershindo 先为不可胜意思是先（使自己）成为不可被战胜的。不可胜在这里更像是一个形容词，意思是不可被战胜的。

chris6911 · Answer

@kungfumastershindo this question reminds me of my high school time when I studied 文言文 for the college entrance examination.There was one kind of questions that require us to select the single character's meaning.As you have known,one single character could have so many different meanings,for example,the simple 道 has more than five kind of meanings in 文言文.What makes things even worse is that we don't have certain way to find out the suitable meaning directly.we need to put it into a sentence and compare all the meanings to find out the most suitable one.According to my experience,if you are passionate about 文言文，I suggest that you could collect different meanings of one character and match them with different sentences,just like what I did in my high school classes.
by the way,I am still a English learner,so I would like to know if the English sentences written by me is idiomatic.

chris6911 · Answer

@kungfumastershindo take the 胜 for example.It has these meanings in 文言文:(1)胜利；取胜；战胜。
例《邹忌讽齐王纳谏》：“此所谓战胜于朝廷。”
(2)制服；克服
例《吕氏春秋·先己》：“故欲胜人者，必先自胜。”
(3)胜过；超过。
例《琵琶行》：“此时无声胜有声。”

(4)优美；美好。
例北宋范仲淹的《岳阳楼记》：“予观夫巴陵胜状在洞庭一湖。”

(5)风景优美的地方；名胜。
例《过小孤山大孤山》：“三面临江；倒影水中，亦占一山之胜。”
You can recite all these meanings.By doing this,next time when see this character in a sentence,you can choose the most suitable meanings for that sentence.

chris6911 · Answer

@kungfumastershindo 我不知道如何用英文表达。用中文说就是我想知道我写的英文句子是否符合语言习惯，我的表达方式是否和母语者相似。

chris6911 · Answer

@kungfumastershindo I did some research on the Internet，now I almost understand why it's translated in this way.在“不可胜”中，“胜”就是战胜的意思，但是它被翻译成“被战胜”是因为前面有“为”。这是文言文中的一种特殊句式，叫作“被动句式”。具体来说，如果一个动词前出现了为，那么这个动词就变成被动意思。

chris6911 · Answer

@kungfumastershindo there is another example:而身死国灭，为天下笑。in this sentence,“笑”是嘲笑的意思，但是因为前面有“为”，所以这句话的意思是“被天下的人嘲笑”。

chris6911 · Answer

@kungfumastershindo ok,now I understand.thanks for your advice.

为什么”不可胜“的意思是反转的？你们能不能给我解释一下吗? See a translation

“可胜”means that someone can success.if you put“不”in front of it,it means that someone can't success.“不”是对它后面部分的否定，例如“不可以”中的“不”就是对“可以”的否定。

“意思是反转的”具体是指什么？

不=not“可胜” means that someone can success.add 不 in this sentence.“不可胜” means that someone can not success.

@kungfumastershindo 不是的，“先为不可胜”的意思是“先创造（让敌人）不能战胜（我）的条件”。

@kungfumastershindo 先为不可胜意思是先（使自己）成为不可被战胜的。不可胜在这里更像是一个形容词，意思是不可被战胜的。

@kungfumastershindo 不 = un-可 = -able胜 = defeat (vt. e.g. 我胜了他 = I defeated him.)不可胜 = undefeatable (not "unable to defeat others")

@kungfumastershindo 我不知道如何用英文表达。用中文说就是我想知道我写的英文句子是否符合语言习惯，我的表达方式是否和母语者相似。

@kungfumastershindo there is another example:而身死国灭，为天下笑。in this sentence,“笑”是嘲笑的意思，但是因为前面有“为”，所以这句话的意思是“被天下的人嘲笑”。

@kungfumastershindo ok,now I understand.thanks for your advice.

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为什么”不可胜“的意思是反转的？你们能不能给我解释一下吗?

不=not
“可胜” means that someone can success.
add 不 in this sentence.
“不可胜” means that someone can not success.

@kungfumastershindo
不 = un-
可 = -able
胜 = defeat (vt. e.g. 我胜了他 = I defeated him.)

不可胜 = undefeatable (not "unable to defeat others")