Yang Xianyi (1915-2009)

Yang Xianyi (1915-2009)

A widely-acclaimed translator, Yang is well-known for his rendering of many Chinese classics into English, including Dream of the Red Chamber. Born into a rich family from Tianjin, Yang was sent to study at Oxford in 1936, where he met his future wife and lifelong working partner, Gladys Taylor. In 1940, the couple returned to China and started their decades-long work in translating Chinese classics into English. As a trilingual scholar, Yang was the first to translate Odysseia into Chinese from ancient Greek. He also translated Aristophanes' Ornites, Virgil's Georgics, La chanson de Roland, and Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. Yang worked for the Foreign Languages Press since its founding in 1949. During his tenure, he narrowly escaped being charged as a "rightist" during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Yang died on November 23, 2009, at the age of 95.

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