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Lucy Chao

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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
FatherT. C. Chao
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese趙蘿蕤
Simplified Chinese赵萝蕤
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinZhào Luóruí
Wade–GilesChao Lo-jui

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

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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] Afterward, 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

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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

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  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. ^ a b "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. ^ a b Wu 2007.
  5. ^ Wu & Li 1993, p. 13.
  6. ^ Hessler 2007, p. 432.
  7. ^ Hessler 2007, p. 224.
  8. ^ Hessler 2007, p. 454.

Sources

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Further reading

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  • 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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