Many people attended a funeral ceremony on Tuesday to say farewell to Li Yueran, one of China's famous translators, who died at 76, on July 11.
Since the 1950s, Li Yueran had worked as the chief interpreter for state leaders Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping.
He also completed a huge amount of Sino-Russian translation work for a variety of government and diplomatic documents, and wrote many books on translation and foreign language teaching theories.
Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin conferred on Li a memorial medal marking the 50th anniversary of victory of the Anti- Fascist War, extending thanks for his outstanding contributions to the development of Sino-Russian relationship.
The China-Russia Association for Friendship also awarded him a medal, praising his excellent performance in promoting Sino- Russian friendship.
Li Yueran was the vice-president of the Beijing Second Institute of Foreign Languages, and vice-president of the Translators Association of China. His death is a great loss to China's translation and foreign language teaching circles.
(China Radio International July 16, 2003)
