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Man of many words
By Mei Jia and Lin Shujuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-26 11:05
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Yang Xianyi, 91, resting at home in 2006. He stopped translating only in 1999 after the demise of his wife of 58 years, Gladys Taylor. |
When Yang Xianyi's mother was pregnant with him, she had an unusual dream: She saw a white tiger leap into her lap.
Her child, interpreted a fortune teller, would have a distinguished career.
The dream proved prophetic.
Yang's seminal contributions in the field of literary translation, won him "Lifelong Achievement in Translation" in September from Translators Association of China.
The veteran scholar, translator and interpreter of Chinese and Western literature died at the age of 94 on Monday morning. A memorial service for him will be open to the public on Sunday at Beijing's Babaoshan Funeral Home, announced Yang's former employer, the Foreign Languages Press (FLP), yesterday.
The publisher has stocked up a few thousand copies of Yang's translated works, especially the 18th century A Dream of Red Mansions, translated by Yang and his British wife Gladys Taylor (Dai Naidie) in the 1970s, in anticipation of a surge in demand, says Hu Kaimin, FLP's vice editor-in-chief.
"Demand for the English version of A Dream of Red Mansions has been relatively steady since it was first published in 1974," says Hu. "It has become a must-read for any English-speaking reader interested in traditional Chinese culture and literature."
Besides A Dream of Red Mansions, Yang, whose translation career was closely bound with that of his wife, translated scores of other classics, including the Greek epic poem Odyssey by Homer from ancient Greek into Chinese.
Born and raised in a wealthy banker's family, Yang had a checkered life, which Yang himself detailed delightfully in his English autobiography, White Tiger.
The book was first published in 2000, soon after the death of his wife.
Yang gives a candid and entertaining account of himself as a carefree and mischievous young man who immersed himself in the learning of European culture, ancient and modern, when he studied at Oxford in the 1930s.
But the book also offers an illuminating self-portrait of a deeply patriotic intellectual living in a China in the throes of change, and offers a rare insight into the survival of a courageous, witty and principled individual during the harsh century of China's liberation.
Yang starts his life story with that dream about the tiger. His mother was also told the child would have no brothers, and his birth would put the father's health in danger.
Indeed, Yang was his mother's only male child and his father died when he was only 5.
