Does anyone speak Chinese?

The translated text is what it means.

Its telling the generals that all wars are won by paying the price in bodies. hence an outright warfare is always the last resort. Victory is about achieving military objective, and the most ideal way is to use tactics that doesnt involve spilling bloods.

Thanks, I'm trying to get the meaning of the quote right so I want to be 100% that I have the right characters, given that this quote comes from ancient Chinese it would be appropriate to have it written top to bottom right to left yes?

correct

yep you're on track, more or less. the second part ~= to win without fighting is the greatest

Fluent in Chinese- yep just using the second part makes sense.

Would you mind walking me through the way the quote reads, translating it symbol by symbol just leaves a mess

sorry what do you mean ? i take it you want me to help you with pronunciation?

No not pronunciation just more how the sentence/phrase reads, like the use of comma to split it, in english there are rules like having verbs adjectives etc etc, im wondering how the quote actually reads, how do you know it means what it means?

Further what purpose does each sybol play? I assume none of them mean words like 'the' 'or' 'and,

No not pronunciation just more how the sentence/phrase reads, like the use of comma to split it, in english there are rules like having verbs adjectives etc etc, im wondering how the quote actually reads, how do you know it means what it means?

Further what purpose does each sybol play? I assume none of them mean words like 'the' 'or' 'and,

you want me to translate each character ?

I want to know how the words connect to each other and form a meaningful phrase, when i translate it word be word i get word soup

"No war/no peace, and/as well as/ but, bent/feel wronged, man/person/people, him/her it... Etc"

i think you mistaken how the language works. its not like romanize language where you connect alphabets. Each/most character has a meaning of its own and it means what it is meant to mean.

So how does it connect together? Do you use the conext of some characters to decide what others mean? Coz several of the characters seem to have multiple english translations

For example the first two characters can apparently translate both as "no peace" and as "no war"

So how does it connect together? Do you use the conext of some characters to decide what others mean? Coz several of the characters seem to have multiple english translations

For example the first two characters can apparently translate both as "no peace" and as "no war"

So how does it connect together? Do you use the conext of some characters to decide what others mean? Coz several of the characters seem to have multiple english translations

For example the first two characters can apparently translate both as "no peace" and as "no war"

This is classical chinese so obviously its very difficult to understand.

The first two character means "without fighting".

So it is more like a picture than a book? so the idea of no fighting but still subjugating enemies together with the idea of greatness all fit together like a picture? Would the order of words matter then?

Is it possible for someone to walk me through how it reads, translating per character leaves a mess, im not sure what specific language it is other than ancient chinese

I can speak Hakka :P