Yang Jiang
Yang Jiang ( 杨绛 , Yáng Jiàng ; born July 17, 1911 in Beijing ; died May 25, 2016 ibid.) Was a Chinese author, literary scholar and translator. She wrote plays, short stories and essays as well as the first complete translation of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes from the Spanish original into Chinese.
Life
She was born under the name Yang Jikang ( 杨季康 ) and grew up in Jiangnan . She studied at Soochow University until 1932 and enrolled at Tsinghua University . There she met Qian Zhongshu , whom she married in 1935. The couple then studied at the University of Oxford and the Sorbonne . In 1937, their daughter Qian Yuan (錢 瑗) was born. Even after returning to China in 1938, the spouses liked to speak English and French in private. Her husband now taught English at various universities in the war country; she herself wrote short stories, essays and four stage plays in the 1940s, through which she gained notoriety. In the period after the founding of the People's Republic of China , she finally began to teach herself and to work as a translator of Western literature. In 1951 her translation of Lazarillo de Tormes was published , and in 1956 that by Gil Blas ( Alain-René Lesage ).
After that, the period of political persecution and work for intellectuals began. In 1958 the couple was employed as steel workers. While the remaining teachers were still employed as farm workers from 1959 until the end of the great leap forward , the Qian and Yang were allowed to translate Mao's writings , which ensured their survival in the capital. In 1966 there was a denunciation, and the daughter Qian Yuan, who is now a teacher herself, had to publicly distance herself from her parents. In 1969 and 1970 there were re-education camps and cadre forges for the two 60-year-olds; the son-in-law committed suicide during this time. The couple suffered further harassment in the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution . Yang Jiang was used as a toilet cleaner with a piebald-shaven head, while her husband was humiliated in exile as a janitor.
She had been working on the translation of Don Quixote since the 1960s and had in the meantime learned Spanish because the English and French translations were not enough for her to translate Cervantes' work. Before completion, the Red Guards confiscated the seven volumes that had already been completed. However, someone rescued the manuscripts from the waste paper and returned them to Yang Jiang so that she could complete the translation in November 1976. Deng Xiaoping presented King Juan Carlos with the eight-volume work as a host gift on his state visit in 1978. Since then, it has been considered the standard translation in Chinese.
Since the late 1970s, the couple was able to travel and publish again and used this freedom to travel to Europe and America. In 1986, Yang received the Spanish Order of Merit of Alfonso X the Wise . Her novel Baden , published in 1988, is considered to be an important contribution to the Chinese coming to terms with the past after the brainwashing of the Mao era. Yang Jiang hid her daughter's 1997 death from spinal cord cancer from her husband, who also died in 1998. Yang edited his unpublished work and also added her daughter's own memoirs, which she published in 2003, to her daughter's memoirs, which her only started chapter by chapter. She died in Beijing at the age of 104.
plant
Stage plays
- All's well that ends well / completely satisfied ( 稱心如意 , English: Heart's Desire , comedy) (1943)
- Truth and lie / The deception becomes truth ( 弄 真 成 假 , English: Forging the Truth , Comedy) (1944)
- ( 游戏 人间 , English: Sporting with the World , Comedy / Posse) (1945)
- Willow blossoms in the wind / breeze ( 风絮 , English: Windswept Blossoms , tragedy) (1947)
prose
- Spring Earth (1979, short stories)
- Six chapters from the Kaderschule (novel, 1980. English: Six Chapters from My Life 'Downunder' ; Original: 幹校 六 記)
- Silhouette (1982, short stories)
- 將 飲茶 (English: About to Drink Tea , 1987)
- Bathing / Brainwashing (novel, 1988. English: Baptism ; Original: 洗澡)
- Wir Drei (Autobiographical Work, 2003. English: We three ; Original: 我們 仨)
- On the way to the limit of life , 2007.
- After bathing (essay, 2014. English: After the Baptism ; Original: 洗澡 之後)
Translations
- Lazarillo de Tormes (anonymous, 1951)
- Gil Blas (Alain-René Lesage, 1956)
- Don Quixote (Miguel Cervantes, 1976)
- Phaedo (Plato, 1998)
translation to German
- Yang Jiang: The three of us . Translated from the Chinese by Monika Motsch . Gossenberg, Ostasien Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3940527677
Individual evidence
- ^ Marc Hermann: Yang Jiang , in: Marc Hermann, Weiping Huang, Henriette Pleiger, Thomas Zimmer: Biographical Handbook of Chinese Writers: Life and Works ; de Gruyter Verlag 2011, p. 321f., wrongly names Wuxi as Yang's place of birth. In fact, only because of her family origins, Yang is referred to in Chinese sources as "coming from Wuxi".
- ↑ Der Standard : Chinese writer Yang Jiang has died. Retrieved November 1, 2019.
- ↑ a b c Cary Huang and Oliver Chou: Yang Jiang, bestselling author who wrote on the pain of living through persecution during Cultural Revolution, dies at 104 . In: South China Morning Post . Retrieved November 1, 2019.
- ↑ a b Monika Motsch: Two translations of Chinese literature: Qian Zhongshu: The Surrounded Fortress and Yang Jiang: We Three . In: China Today, accessed November 1, 2019.
- ↑ a b Yang Jiang Dies at 104; Revered Writer Witnessed China's Cultural Revolution . In: The New York Times , Retrieved November 1, 2019.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Yang, Jiang |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | 杨绛 (Chinese); Jikang, Yang (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Chinese writer and translator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 17, 1911 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wuxi |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 25, 2016 |
| Place of death | Beijing |