By Du Guodong and Mao Renjie

Translator Yang Xianyi in August, 2009. Photo: CFP

One of China's most well known and highly acclaimed translators, Yang Xianyi, lost his battle with cancer Monday in Beijing at the age of 95.

Yang's niece Zhao Heng told the Global Times that Yang had been fighting lymphatic cancer for years and passed away at Beijing Meitan Hospital Monday morning after receiving treatment for advanced stages of the disease last month.

Yang was known throughout China and much of the international literary world for having translated a great number of Chinese classical works into English, ranging from Selections from Records of the Historian, Li Sao, The Travels of Lao Can and A Dream of Red Mansions to modern classics such as Lu Xun: Selected Works and The Song of Youth. Yang usually worked with his British wife, Gladys Yang, also widely known as a brilliant translator.

The couple's translations have been internationally recognized for their accuracy, likeness and faithfulness to the original work, while at the same time catering to the taste of the target language. According to critics and experts alike, their translations are second to none among Chinese translators in terms of both quality and significance.

One of their most famous translations, A Dream of Red Mansions, began in the early 1960s and ended in 1974. Considered representative of the Yangs, it continues to be highly received worldwide for its exact rendering of the Chinese literary classic. The couple have been credited with making the work accessible to the outside world and it is regarded as the genuine version that has allowed Westerners to understand the traditional Chinese love story. Many colleges in the US and throughout the world use the Yang's version as textbooks to study Chinese literature.

In 1952, Yang Xianyi was appointed as chief editor of Chinese Literature, a magazine founded in 1951. It served as a portal for introducing elite Chinese literature to the outside world, especially before China's reform and opening up policy.

For his outstanding achievements, Yang received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Translation from the Translators Association of China on September 17 this year, the second translator ever to receive the accolade next to master scholar Ji Xianlin.

Yang's translation A Dream of Red Mansions.

"Yang has in his career translated a great number of traditional Chinese literary works into English and no one is comparable to his achievements in this field," vice president and chief editor of China International Publishing Group, Huang Youyi told the Global Times.

"In the area of Chinese to English translation, Yang is the number one in contemporary China, serving as a model for followers to learn," he added.

Huang said that currently China is dedicated to promoting Chinese traditional culture to the outside world and Yang serves as a flag. He added that there are no more than 100 professionals in China qualified to translate literature, the shortage of translators like Yang posing a severe problem.

Huang recollected his days of working alongside Yang, saying that Yang was kind to everyone, from his superiors and colleagues to younger co-workers and that his tolerance and generosity was as desirable as his knowledge.

Huang said that during the Cultural Revolution (1966- 76), Yang was sent to receive reeducation for publishing Western ideals just like most scholars. After the havoc, Yang dedicated himself to the promotion of Chinese culture and civilization to the world.

Huang added that despite Yang being seriously ill immediately after the Cultural Revolution, he always kept a positive attitude.

"He was such a kind of lovely old man, active and optimistic," Huang said.

When he was 24, Yang translated the Chinese masterpiece Li Sao into English. Meeting with Mao Zedong in 1953 and recommended by Zhou Enlai as a senior translator, Mao was apparently taken aback by Yang's age and questioned whether the difficult Li Sao could really be translated into English. Yang famously replied that anything could be translated into English.

Gladys Yang and Yang Xianyi in 1941.

Born into a wealthy family in 1915 in Tianjin, Yang studied Chinese classics at a private school before attending a missionary school where he developed his interest in English literature and Athenian drama. In 1936 his father sent him to Oxford where he studied Classics for two years and then shifted to English Literature.

As the president of the Oxford China Society, he met Gladys Tayler. Tayler's father served as a British missionary in China. Tayler was born in Beijing and became Oxford's first graduate in Chinese in 1940. With the same interest in Chinese classical literature, they got married and returned to China in 1940. Tayler became Gladys Yang and Yang Xianyi's partner in both life and introducing Chinese classics to the English-speaking world.

While Tayler's mother disapproved of the union, the Yangs lived together until Gladys passed away in 1999 at the age of 80, in Beijing.

After both taking positions at the Foreign Languages Press in Beijing in 1951, the couple started their translation career. In additional to translations from Chinese to English, they also introduced several Western classics to China, including Homer's Odyssey and George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.

In an interview with Southern People Weekly earlier this year, Yang acknowledged his wife's significance in their translations. "Our works could never have been this good without her. She was the real translator, not me," Yang said.

Yang said in the interview that their work procedure had always been that he translated the first draft and she polished it. "After all, she was the native speaker and had been immersed in English classical literature since a young age."

Yang ended his translation after the death of his wife. He was also a poet and cultural history scholar and published his English autobiography White Tiger in 2002. Yang is survived by his two daughters, his son died in 1979.