André Lévy (; 24 November 1925 – 3 October 2017) was a

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

sinologist Sinology, or Chinese studies, is an academic discipline that focuses on the study of China primarily through Chinese philosophy, language, literature, culture and history and often refers to Western scholarship. Its origin "may be traced to the ex ...

. He was born in 1925 in

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popu ...

. He translated many Chinese works of fiction into French.Fogel, p. 160.

Biography

Levy was born in

, China, in 1925, the son of a family of watchmakers and jewellers, and grew up in the French concession in Tianjin. He married Anne-Marie Lévy, the Norwegian writer. Levy studied French and Sinology, Hindi and Sanskrit at the Sorbonne, and published numerous translations from the Chinese, including ''La pérégrination vers l'Ouest'' (Xiyou ji -

Journey to the West ''Journey to the West'' () is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is regarded as one of the greatest Classic Chinese Novels, and has been described as arguably the most popul ...

) and ''Fleur en fiole d'or'' (

Jin Ping Mei ''Jin Ping Mei'' () — translated into English as ''The Plum in the Golden Vase'' or ''The Golden Lotus'' — is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the latter half of the 16th century during the late Ming dynasty ...

). In 1958, he was in charge of the

EFEO The French School of the Far East (french: École française d'Extrême-Orient, ), abbreviated EFEO, is an associated college of PSL University dedicated to the study of Asian societies. It was founded in 1900 with headquarters in Hanoi in wh ...

Hanoi Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi i ...

for a while, before its closure. In 1959 he went to

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the c ...

, where he availed himself of the rich collections of Chinese literature at the Japon Jimbun Kagaku Kenkyûsho library. He left Kyoto in 1966, and went to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a List of cities in China, city and Special administrative regions of China, special ...

, still as an EFEO researcher. In 1974 he received his doctorate in stories and spoken language of the seventeenth century. In 1969 he was appointed Director of Chinese Studies at the University of Bordeaux. Between 1981 and 1984 he was Director of the East Asian department at Paris-VII University. In 1995 he became Emeritus Professor at l'université Bordeaux-III. He received the bronze medal of the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,63 ...

, and was made Commandeur des Palmes académiques in 1988.

Publications

* Lévy, André.
Fleur sur l'océan des péchés
. (book review of ''

A Flower in a Sinful Sea ''A Flower in a Sinful Sea'' (Chinese: 孽海花, Hanyu Pinyin: ''Nièhǎihuā'', Wade-Giles:, ''Nieh-hai hua'') is a novel by Jin Tianhe (also known as Jin Songcen) and Zeng Pu (also written as Tseng P'u). First published in serial installm ...

''
Archive
. '' Études chinoises'', No. 1, 1982. * * ''Fleur en fiole d'or, Jin Ping Mei Cihua''. Translated and annotated by André Lévy. La Pléiade Gallimard 1985. Folio Gallimard 2004. 2 volumes . The first translation into a Western language to use the 1610 edition. * Lévy, André.
La passion de traduire
"
Archive
In: Alleton, Vivianne and Michael Lackner (editors). '' De l'un au multiple: traductions du chinois vers les langues européennes Translations from Chinese into European Languages''. Éditions de la maison des sciences de l'homme (Les Editions de la MSH, FR), 1999,

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. p. 161-172. , 9782735107681. - English abstract available

Obituaries

Lévy died in

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectu ...

with death published in the Le Monde, 4 October 2017

References

* Fogel, Joshua A
''De l'un au multiple: Traductions du chinois vers les langues européenes'' (book review)
''

The Journal of Asian Studies ''The Journal of Asian Studies'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Asian Studies, covering Asian studies, ranging from history, the arts, social sciences, to phil ...

'', ISSN 0021-9118, 02/2001, Volume 60, Issue 1, pp. 159 – 161. Available from

JStor JSTOR (; short for ''Journal Storage'') is a digital library founded in 1995 in New York City. Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of j ...

. - Review of '' De l'un au multiple: Traductions du chinois vers les langues européenes''

Notes

1925 births 2017 deaths French sinologists Translators from Chinese Translators to French French male non-fiction writers French expatriates in China Writers from Tianjin 20th-century French translators {{China-translator-stub