Yang Xianyi

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title: "Yang Xianyi" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["alumni-of-merton-college,-oxford", "chinese–english-translators", "1915-births", "2009-deaths", "translators-to-chinese", "writers-from-tianjin", "educators-from-tianjin", "academic-staff-of-chongqing-university", "victims-of-the-cultural-revolution", "20th-century-chinese-translators", "21st-century-chinese-translators", "literary-translators", "translators-of-homer", "translators-of-virgil", "chinese-magazine-founders"] description: "Chinese literary translator (1915–2009)" topic_path: "science/biology" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Xianyi" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Chinese literary translator (1915–2009) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]

Field	Value
name	Yang Xianyi
image	Yang Xianyi and Gladys Taylor (Yang Xianyi).jpg
alt	Yang in 1941
caption	Yang in 1941
birth_date
birth_place	Tianjin, Republic of China
death_date
death_place	Beijing, People's Republic of China
other_names	Yang Hsien-i
occupation	Translator
spouse	Gladys Yang
children	3
relatives	Yang Yi (sister)
::

| name = Yang Xianyi | image = Yang Xianyi and Gladys Taylor (Yang Xianyi).jpg | alt = Yang in 1941 | caption = Yang in 1941 | birth_date = | birth_place = Tianjin, Republic of China | death_date = | death_place = Beijing, People's Republic of China | other_names = Yang Hsien-i | occupation = Translator | spouse = Gladys Yang | children = 3 | relatives = Yang Yi (sister) Yang Xianyi (; January 10, 1915 – November 23, 2009) was a Chinese literary translator, known for rendering many ancient and a few modern Chinese classics into English, including Dream of the Red Mansions.

Life and career

Born into a wealthy banking family in Tianjin, he was sent to Merton College, Oxford to study Classics in 1936. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Bunny_Mellor_at_Merton,_bottom_right,_his_friend_Yang_Xianyi,_third_from_bottom_left,_1930s.jpg" caption="Yang at Merton, third from bottom left, his friend Bunny Mellor bottom right, 1930s."] ::

There he married Gladys Tayler. They had two daughters and a son, who committed suicide in 1979.

Yang and his wife returned to China in 1940, and began their decades long co-operation of introducing Chinese classics to the English-speaking world. Working for the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing, a government-funded publisher, the husband and wife team produced a number of quality translations. The works translated include classical Chinese poetry; such classic works as A Dream of the Red Mansions, The Scholars, Liu E's Mr. Decadent: Notes Taken in an Outing (老殘遊記), also known as The Travels of Lao Can, and some of Lu Xun's stories.

Yang was also the first one to render the Odyssey into Chinese (prose) from the ancient Greek original. He also translated Aristophanes's Ornithes, Virgil's Georgics, La chanson de Roland and Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion into Chinese.

He narrowly escaped being labeled a "rightist" in 1957-58 for his frank speaking. However, Yang and his wife Gladys were imprisoned for four years as "class enemies" in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution. Gladys died in 1999.

He was also noted for writing doggerel. His autobiography, White Tiger, was published in 2003.

After Yang Xianyi died in 2009, his youngest sister, translator Yang Yi, compiled and edited a book including poetry translated by her late brother. In 2022, a new edition was released by Chinese Translation Publishing House, called Brother–Sister Translated Poems (兄妹译诗) or Translated Poems by Yang Xianyi and Yang Yi, featuring more than 100 of their favorite poems.

References

References

1. (24 Nov 2009). "Translator Yang Xianyi passes away at 94, translator of A Dream of the Red Mansions to English". Xinhua News Agency.
2. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/23/yang-xianyi-obituary "Yang Xianyi obituary"], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 24 November 2009. Retrieved March 2022.
3. (1964). "Merton College Register 1900-1964". Basil Blackwell.
4. [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5114414.ece Oxford graduate Gladys beguiles China]{{dead link. (September 2024). s
5. (2003). "White Tiger - An Autobiography of Yang Xiangyi". The Chinese University Press.
6. (10 Dec 2009). "Obituary: Yang Xianyi". The Telegraph (UK).
7. Gao, Dan. (September 21, 2022). "《杨宪益杨苡兄妹译诗》：将人生活成诗歌". [[The Paper (newspaper).

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