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This is a list of Chinese-English translators.
Lists and biographies of translators of contemporary literature (fiction, essays, poetry) are maintained by Paper Republic, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture (MCLC), and on the Renditions Translator database.
The history of the Chinese literature extends thousands of years, from the earliest recorded dynastic court archives to the mature vernacular fiction novels that arose during the Ming dynasty to entertain the masses of literate Chinese. The introduction of widespread woodblock printing during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and the invention of movable type printing by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Song dynasty (960–1279) rapidly spread written knowledge throughout China. In more modern times, the author Lu Xun (1881–1936) is considered an influential voice of baihua literature in China.
Dream of the Red Chamber or The Story of the Stone is a Chinese novel composed by Cao Xueqin in the mid-18th century. One of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, it is known for its psychological scope and its observation of the worldview, aesthetics, lifestyles, and social relations of 18th-century China.
Burton Dewitt Watson was an American sinologist, translator, and writer known for his English translations of Chinese and Japanese literature. Watson's translations received many awards, including the Gold Medal Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University in 1979, the PEN Translation Prize in 1982 for his translation with Hiroaki Sato of From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, and again in 1995 for Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o. In 2015, at age 88, Watson was awarded the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation for his long and prolific translation career.
Jin Ping Mei —translated into English as The Plum in the Golden Vase or The Golden Lotus—is a Chinese novel of manners composed in vernacular Chinese during the latter half of the 16th century during the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Consisting of 100 chapters, it was published under the pseudonym Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng (蘭陵笑笑生), "The Scoffing Scholar of Lanling," but the only clue to the actual identity is that the author hailed from Lanling County in present-day Shandong. The novel circulated in manuscript as early as 1596, and may have undergone revision up to its first printed edition in 1610. The most widely read recension, edited and published with commentaries by Zhang Zhupo in 1695, deleted or rewrote passages important in understanding the author's intentions.
The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is an organization in the United States dedicated to literary translation. ALTA promotes literary translation through its annual conference, which draws hundreds of translators and literary professionals from around the world; the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose, an annual $5,000 prize for the best book-length translation into English of poetry and prose; the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, which awards $6,000 each year for the best book-length translation of an Asian work into English; the Italian Prose in Translation Award (IPTA), which awards $5,000 each year for the best book-length translation of a work of Italian prose into English; and the ALTA Travel Fellowships, which are $1,000 prizes awarded annually to 4-6 emerging translators for travel to the annual conference. Starting in 2016, in addition to the ALTA Travel Fellowships, one fellowship, the Peter K. Jansen Memorial Fellowship, is awarded to an emerging translator of color or translator from a stateless or diaspora language.
Taiwanese literature refers to the literature written by Taiwanese in any language ever used in Taiwan, including Japanese, Taiwanese Han and Austronesian languages.
Lin Shu (Chinese: 林紓, November 8, 1852 – October 9, 1924; courtesy name Qinnan was a Chinese man of letters, especially for introducing Western literature to a whole generation of Chinese readers, despite his ignorance of any foreign languages. Collaborating with others, he translated from English or French into Literary Chinese over 180 works, mostly novels, drawn from 98 writers of 11 countries.
Howard Goldblatt is a literary translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction, including The Taste of Apples by Huang Chunming and The Execution of Mayor Yin by Chen Ruoxi. Goldblatt also translated works of Chinese novelist and 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Mo Yan, including six of Mo Yan's novels and collections of stories. He was a Research Professor of Chinese at the University of Notre Dame from 2002 to 2011.
Deng Xiaohua, better known by her pen name Can Xue, is a Chinese avant-garde fiction writer and literary critic. Her family was severely persecuted following her father being labeled a rightist in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957. Her writing, which consists mostly of short fiction, breaks with the realism of earlier modern Chinese writers. She has also written novels, novellas, and literary criticism of Dante, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Can Xue has been described as "China’s most prominent author of experimental fiction," and most of her fiction has been translated and published in English.
The PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants were established in 2003 by PEN America following a gift of $730,000 by Michael Henry Heim, a noted literary translator. Heim believed that there was a 'dismayingly low number of literary translations currently appearing in English'. The Grants' purpose is to promote the publication and reception of translated world literature in English. Grants are awarded each year to a select number of literary translators based on quality of translation as well as the originality and importance of the original work. The Fund's mission is to promote the publication and reception of world literature.
Chi-chen Wang was a Chinese-born American literary scholar and translator. He taught as a professor at Columbia University from 1929 until his retirement in 1965.
Mo Yun-tuan, known by the pen name Luo Fu, was a Taiwanese writer and poet.
The Bai Meigui Translation Prize is a translation prize awarded annually by the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, at the University of Leeds.
Kuo-ch'ing Tu is a poet, scholar, translator, critic, and professor. He is a Professor Emeritus in the East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he held the Lai Ho and Wu Cho-liu Endowed Chair from its establishment in 2003 until his retirement in 2020. He was also founder and director of the Center for Taiwan Studies. In 1996, he founded the biannual journal Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series《台灣文學英譯叢刊, and remains its editor.