| Lucy Chao | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 趙蘿蕤 | |||||||||
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| Born | (1912-05-09)May 9, 1912 | ||||||||
| Died | January 1, 1998(1998-01-01) (aged 85) | ||||||||
| Nationality | Chinese | ||||||||
| Other names | Zhao Luorui | ||||||||
| Alma mater | University of Chicago | ||||||||
| Known for | Poetry and translations | ||||||||
| Spouse | Chen Mengjia | ||||||||
| Father | T. C. Chao | ||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 趙蘿蕤 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 赵萝蕤 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
Lucy Chao or Zhao Luorui (simplified Chinese: 赵萝蕤; traditional Chinese: 趙蘿蕤; pinyin: Zhào Luóruí; Wade–Giles: Chao Lo-jui; May 9, 1912 – January 1, 1998) was a Chinese poet and translator.
Biography
Chao was born on May 9, 1912, in Xinshi, Deqing County, Zhejiang, China.
She married Chen Mengjia, an anthropologist and expert on oracle bones, in 1932. In 1944 Chao and Chen were awarded a joint fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study at the University of Chicago in the United States. Chao earned her PhD from the institution in 1948, for a dissertation on Henry James. Afterward, she returned to China to teach English and North American literature at Yenching University, Beijing.
Chao's husband Chen opposed the government's proposal to simplify Chinese writing in the 1950s and was labeled a Rightist and an enemy of the Communist Party. He was sent to a labor camp in 1957. After he returned, he was banned from publishing research and committed suicide after denunciation and persecution during the Cultural Revolution.
After Chen's death, Chao developed schizophrenia. In spite of this, she created the first complete Chinese translation of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which was published in 1991. That same year, she was awarded the University of Chicago's "Professional Achievement Award".
Works
Chao translated T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land (1937), Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha and eventually saw a mass publication of her translation of the whole of Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1991). She was a co-editor of the first Chinese-language History of European Literature (1979).
References
- "赵萝蕤，记住这个翻译家的名字，不要念错了". 谈资有营养. 2018-05-09. Retrieved 2019-09-19.
- ^ "赵萝蕤小传：历经磨难、精神分裂的民国才女，翻译出不朽名作". 万象历史. 2019-05-09. Retrieved 2019-09-19.
- Hessler 2007, p. 245.
- ^ Wu 2007.
- Wu & Li 1993, p. 13.
- Hessler 2007, p. 432.
- Hessler 2007, p. 224.
- Hessler 2007, p. 454.
Sources
- Hessler, Peter (2007). Oracle Bones. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0-06-082659-8.
- Wu, Ningkun; Li, Yikai (1993). A Single Tear. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0-87113-494-2.
- Wu, Ningkun (2007). "一代才女赵萝蕤教授". 中外书摘. 2007 (10). Retrieved 2019-09-20.
Further reading
- Price, Kenneth M. 'An Interview with Zhao Luorui.' Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 13 (1995): 59–63. Publ. 1996.
- Bloomsbury Guide to Women's Literature
External links
Categories:- 1912 births
- 1998 deaths
- English–Chinese translators
- Chinese women poets
- Writers from Huzhou
- Educators from Huzhou
- Yenching University alumni
- Tsinghua University alumni
- Academic staff of Yenching University
- Academic staff of Peking University
- University of Chicago alumni
- 20th-century Chinese women writers
- 20th-century Chinese translators
- 20th-century Chinese poets
- Poets from Zhejiang
- People from Deqing County, Zhejiang