(LA Times) Yang Xianyi, Chinese poet and translator, dies at 94
Matthew Kruk
Yang Xianyi, Chinese poet and translator, dies at 94;
November 24, 2009
Yang Xianyi
Chinese poet and classics translator
Yang Xianyi, 94, a poet who translated numerous Chinese classics into
English, died Monday in Beijing, state news reported.
The report on Shanghai's Xinmin Evening News website did not give a
cause of death, but Yang had reportedly been suffering from cancer.
In September, he was given a lifetime achievement award by the
Translators Assn. of China.
Yang was born in the eastern coastal city of Tianjin in January 1915 and
studied English at Oxford in 1936, where he met and later married Gladys
Taylor.
The two returned to China in 1940 and together formed a prolific
translating team, mostly working at the Foreign Languages Press, a
state-run publishing company based in Beijing.
Besides translating Chinese classics including "The Dream of the Red
Mansions," "The Scholars" and the "Selected Works" of 20th century
writer Lu Xun into English, the Yangs also translated Western works into
Chinese.
Such translations included Homer's "Odyssey," Aristophanes' "The Birds"
and "Peace" and Virgil's Eclogues." Yang was also a poet and fierce
government critic.
Besides finding himself in political trouble during the "anti-rightist"
movement of the late 1950s, Yang suffered during the Cultural Revolution
(1966-1976) and was a strident critic of the government's bloody
crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests.
Gladys Yang died in 1999.
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