Lucy Chao

In this Chinese name, the family name is Zhao (Chao).

Lucy Chao
趙蘿蕤
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
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhào Luóruí Wade–Giles Chao 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

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

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

• Walt Whitman in China