Lucy Chao
趙蘿蕤
Born(1912-05-09)May 9, 1912
DiedJanuary 1, 1998(1998-01-01) (aged 85)
NationalityChinese
Other namesZhao Luorui
Alma materUniversity of Chicago
Known forPoetry and translations
SpouseChen Mengjia
Parent
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.[1]

She married Chen Mengjia, an anthropologist and expert on oracle bones, in 1932.[2] 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.[3] Chao earned her PhD from the institution in 1948, for a dissertation on Henry James.[4][5] Afterwards, she returned to China to teach English and North American literature at Yenching University, Beijing.[2]

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.[6] After he returned, he was banned from publishing research and committed suicide after denunciation and persecution during the Cultural Revolution.[7]

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.[8] That same year, she was awarded the University of Chicago's "Professional Achievement Award".[4]

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

  1. "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.
  2. 1 2 "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.
  3. Hessler 2007, p. 245.
  4. 1 2 Wu 2007.
  5. Wu & Li 1993, p. 13.
  6. Hessler 2007, p. 432.
  7. Hessler 2007, p. 224.
  8. Hessler 2007, p. 454.

Sources

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
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