Gladys Yang

Gladys Yang (born Gladys Margaret Tayler; Chinese Dài Nǎidié戴 乃 迭; born January 19, 1919 in Beijing, † 18 November 1999) was an important British translator of Chinese literature.

Biography

Gladys M. Tayler was born in Beijing as a subsidiary of the British missionary John Bernard Tayler, came to England as a child, went to Seven Oaks ( Kent) to school and began in 1937 to study French literature at Oxford University. At university she met Yang Xianyi, who first studied French and English literature at Oxford. Gladys Tayler now began to study Chinese at ER Hughes and became the first Oxford graduate in this subject. She went with Yang Xianyi to China; In 1940 they married in Chongqing. From 1952 she worked as a translator at the publisher of foreign-language literature in Beijing; 1954 Gladys Yang worked for the magazine Chinese Literature ( "中国 文学"). The couple jointly translated numerous works of classical and modern Chinese literature.

Gladys Yang's eldest brother Bernard was captured by the Japanese army during World War II in Singapore and came around. My second brother and her sister lived in England, her third brother in Zimbabwe.

After the start of the Cultural Revolution Gladys Yang was suspected of May 1968 with her husband as spies and arrested. Only in 1972 were they - like most foreigners in China - released.

Gladys Yang had two daughters and a son.