Xiao Qian

Xiao Qian (born January 27, 1910 in Beijing ; died February 11, 1999 there ) was a Chinese journalist and literary translator.

Life

Xiao Qian attended a school of European missionaries from 1917 and had to work on the side for a living. At fourteen, he joined the Chinese Communist Youth Association . From 1931 he studied at the Catholic Fu-Jen University . He made friends with the writer Shen Congwen and edited several issues of an English language magazine with translations of Chinese literature. From 1933 he studied journalism at Yanjing University , where the American Edgar Snow was employed as a lecturer during his time . After graduating, he went to England in 1936, where he found employment as a lecturer at University College London and, from 1939, as a Chinese teacher at the School of Oriental and African Studies . During the Second World War he wrote reports on life in England for the Chinese newspaper "Ta Kung Pao". At the end of the war he went as a war correspondent with the British Army across the Rhine and was one of the first foreign reporters in conquered Berlin . After the end of the war, he reported on the San Francisco Conference , the Potsdam Conference and the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals .

Xiao returned to China in late 1945 and became a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai . He has translated works from European literature into Chinese , including dramas by William Shakespeare , Stephen Leacocks and Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen . His book on Shakespeare had a million sales. He also translated Tom Jones by Henry Fielding and The good soldier Schwejk by Jaroslav Hašek . He later translated the novel Ulysses by James Joyce with his fourth wife Wen Jieruo , which went to press in 1994.

During the great leap forward in 1957, he was politically persecuted and exiled to the country. He was rehabilitated in 1979 and has only been able to publish under his name again since then. Xiao was most recently director of a research institute at the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China . Xiao became the chairman of the Chinese Writers' Association.

Fonts (selection)

• Semolina and others . Essays. Different translators. Hong Kong: Joint Pub. Co., 1984
• Chest nuts and other stories . Different translators. Beijing: China International Book Trading Corp., 1984
• Traveler without a map . Translator Jeffrey C. Kinkley. Stanford, Calif .: Stanford University Press, 1993 ISBN 978-7-5399-2568-4

literature

• Steffen Radlmaier : The Nuremberg learning process: from war criminals and star reporters . Compiled and introduced by Steffen Radlmaier. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn, 2001 ISBN 978-3-8218-4503-6 , Die Andere Bibliothek series , p. 358f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Xiao Qian in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Xiao Qian (1910–1999) , at Radio Cina internazionale (it)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Xiao is the family name here, Qian is the first name.