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Recently the global language translation community lost Yang Xianvi, one of its most respected and accomplished members. Yang had been suffering from lymphatic cancer since many years and was at an advanced stage of the disease when he succumbed last month at the age of 95. He was famous and admired in not only his native country China but throughout the world for translating many classical Chinese works into English. Some of his translations include A Dream of Red Mansions, Li Sao, The Travels of Lao Can, Selections from Records of the Historian and Lu Xun: Selected Works and The Song of Youth.
Lang usually partnered with his British wife Gladys who was also a brilliant translator. The husband and wife team provided the literary world with Chinese to English translations that were known for their accuracy and faithfulness to the original, as well as readability. A Dream of Red Mansions is one of their most famous and well-received translations which made this great Chinese work accessible to the western world. In fact many US colleges continue to use it in Chinese literature courses. The couple went beyond translating Chinese classics to English and bought many western classics to China, some of which include George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and Homer’s Odyssey.
This year, the Translators Association of China awarded Yang with a Lifetime Achievement Award in translation, making him the second translator in China after the widely revered Ji Xianlin to have been honored with it. Yang had published his autobiography in 2002; it’s in English and titled White Tiger.
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