Yang Xianyi (; January 10, 1915 – November 23, 2009) was a Chinese

literary translator Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

, known for rendering many ancient and a few modern Chinese classics into English, including '' Dream of the Red Mansions''.

Life and career

Born into a wealthy banking family 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 popul ...

, he was sent to

Merton College, Oxford Merton College (in full: The House or College of Scholars of Merton in the University of Oxford) is one of the Colleges of Oxford University, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its foundation can be traced back to the ...

to study

Classics Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

in 1936. There he married Gladys Tayler. They had two daughters and a son, who committed suicide in 1979. Yang and his wife returned to China in 1940, and began their decades long co-operation of introducing Chinese classics to the English-speaking world. Working for the

Foreign Languages Press Foreign Languages Press is a publishing house located in China. Based in Beijing, it was founded in 1952 and currently forms part of the China International Publishing Group, which is owned and controlled by the Publicity Department of the Chi ...

in Beijing, a government-funded publisher, the husband and wife team produced a number of quality translations. The works translated include

classical Chinese poetry Classical Chinese poetry is traditional Chinese poetry written in Classical Chinese and typified by certain traditional forms, or modes; traditional genres; and connections with particular historical periods, such as the poetry of the Tang dyn ...

; such classic works as ''A Dream of the Red Mansions'', '' The Scholars'', Liu E's ''Mr. Decadent: Notes Taken in an Outing'' (), also known as ''

The Travels of Lao Can ''The Travels of Lao Can'' () is a novel by Liu E (1857-1909), written between 1903 and 1904 and published in 1907 to wide acclaim. Thinly disguising his own views in those of Lao Can, the physician hero, Liu describes the rise of the Boxers in ...

'', and some of

Lu Xun Zhou Shuren (25 September 1881 – 19 October 1936), better known by his pen name Lu Xun (or Lu Sun; ; Wade–Giles: Lu Hsün), was a Chinese writer, essayist, poet, and literary critic. He was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. W ...

's stories. Yang was also the first one to render the ''

Odyssey The ''Odyssey'' (; grc, Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia, ) is one of two major Ancient Greek literature, ancient Greek Epic poetry, epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by moder ...

'' into Chinese (prose) from the

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

original. He also translated

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; grc, Ἀριστοφάνης, ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme In Ancient Greece, a deme or ( grc, δῆμος, plural: demoi, δημοι) was a suburb or a subdivision of Athens and other city-states ...

's ''

Ornithes ''The Birds'' ( grc-gre, Ὄρνιθες, Órnithes) is a comedy by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. It was performed in 414 BC at the City Dionysia in Athens where it won second place. It has been acclaimed by modern critics as a perfe ...

'',

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

's ''

Georgics The ''Georgics'' ( ; ) is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BCE. As the name suggests (from the Greek word , ''geōrgika'', i.e. "agricultural (things)") the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example ...

'', ''

La chanson de Roland ''The Song of Roland'' (french: La Chanson de Roland) is an 11th-century ''chanson de geste'' based on the Frankish military leader Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778 AD, during the reign of the Carolingian king Charlemagne. It is t ...

'' and

Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...

's ''

Pygmalion Pygmalion or Pigmalion may refer to: Mythology * Pygmalion (mythology), a sculptor who fell in love with his statue Stage * ''Pigmalion'' (opera), a 1745 opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau * ''Pygmalion'' (Rousseau), a 1762 melodrama by Jean-Jacques ...

'' into Chinese. He narrowly escaped being labeled a "rightist" in 1957-58 for his frank speaking. However, Yang and his wife Gladys were imprisoned for four years as "class enemies" in 1968 during the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal ...

. Gladys died in 1999. He was also noted for writing

doggerel Doggerel, or doggrel, is poetry that is irregular in rhythm and in rhyme, often deliberately for burlesque or comic effect. Alternatively, it can mean verse which has a monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme, and cheap or trivial meaning. The word is deri ...

. His autobiography, ''White Tiger'', was published in 2003.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Yang, Xianyi Alumni of Merton College, Oxford People's Republic of China translators Chinese–English translators 1915 births 2009 deaths Translators to Chinese Writers from Tianjin Republic of China translators Educators from Tianjin Chongqing University faculty Victims of the Cultural Revolution 20th-century Chinese translators 21st-century Chinese translators Literary translators Translators of Homer Translators of Virgil Chinese magazine founders

Life and career

References

Further reading

External links