A Study Of Yang Xianyi And Gladys Yang As Translators

The couple Yang Xianyi (1915— ) and Gladys Yang (1919—1999) are two of the most outstanding translators in Chinese translation history who have made remarkable contributions to the development of China's translation cause. All through their lives, they worked painstakingly and teamed up in a perfect collaboration translating and introducing both Chinese literature to the west and some masterpieces from other languages to China. Few people could be compared with them as far as the quantity and quality of translations are concerned. The author of the present thesis tries to conduct a descriptive study on the Yangs' translation activities, the social context they were in and their translation characteristics so as to make up for the insufficiency of systematic study in China on them in these areas.Starting from the end of the 1930s, Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang were engaged in literary translation and never ceased to translate in their whole lives. According to the nature of their translation activities, the author divided their life-long translation career into three periods: the early, middle and late periods.During the early period from 1938 to 1943 they started to translate mainly for "love". The translated works at this time were the ones they enjoyed very much and they translated them out of their love for Chinese literature. What's more, the original motivation of Yang Xianyi's translation was to help Gladys, whom he loved, to learn Chinese language and cultures.They started their professional translation career in the middle period, which was from 1943 to 1949, while working for the National Institute of Translation and Compilation. The translation work they took in the Institute was mainly a means to support their family life and unfortunately, owing to the war-period turbulence most of their manuscripts during this period were lost.The last period, from the foundation of the PRC to the end of the 1980s, was the most important one in their life-time translation career. During this period, they devoted all their energy to the nation's cultural exchanges with the rest of the world. They were invited to work in the Foreign Languages Press and then for the magazine of Chinese Literature shortly after the Liberation. From the time when this magazine was founded, the couple worked as the major translators till their retirements. A great number of their important translations were published in this magazine during this period. The works they translated were mostly from Chinese into English, which filled to a large extent the blank of introducing Chinese literary writings to the rest of the world.The Yangs' translated works amounted to more than two hundred books and articles. Besides their large amount of translation, in the 1980s, Yang Xianyi suggested to the leadership of Chinese Literature to publish an English book series Panda Books to introduce Chinese literary writings to the English readers. Yang Xianyi was in charge of the editing and source material selection for the Panda Books and many of the works were translated by the couple themselves.As great translation practitioners, the Yangs rarely talked about their translation theories. With the aim of dissemination of Chinese literature and cultures to the world, they adopted literal translation in most cases to meet their needs. Their great contributions lay not only in their numerous translations of Chinese works, making up for the unbalanced situation of focusing much more on the translation of foreign works into Chinese, but also in their efforts of introducing to the west the unique Chinese cultures, then little known to the foreign readers. Thus their work opened an important window for the west to get to know Chinese literature and cultural legacy as well. Meanwhile, quite a number of their translations became models of translation, discussed and studied by later researchers, scholars and translators.The present thesis has testified with abundant data that Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang are great translators to whom the development of China's translation cause is deeply indebted.