Cao Ying, Chinese translator of Russian literature, Died at 92

  Dead Famous

Sheng Junfeng was born on March 23, 1923, and passed away on October 25, 2015.

Better known by his pen name Cao Ying, Cao was a Chinese translator who had been honoured by the Government of the Russian Federation.

He is most notable for being one of the main translators into Chinese of the works of Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Sholokhov.

Born into a wealthy family in Zhenhai District, Ningbo, Zhejiang in 1923, both his grandfather and father were doctors, he graduated from The Lester School and Henry Lester Institute of Technical Education, and Nantong Agricultural College.

In December 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, he moved to Shanghai with his family to escape the violence, by age 14.

In 1938, Cao started to learn Russian language under a Russian housewife and Jiang Chunfang who was a Russian literature translator and a member of the underground CPC of Shanghai.

Cao wrote under the pen name of Cao Ying in 1941.

From 1945 to 1951, he worked as an editor and translator in the Time Publishing Company.

In 1956, he worked in the Shanghai Writers Association.

In 1960, Cao started to translate The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy into Chinese, at the same year, the Sino-Soviet Rupture, and he was brought to be persecuted.

In 1966, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, he suffered political persecution and he was sent to the May Seventh Cadre Schools to work.

Cao got gastrorrhagia in 1969 and he fractured his backbone in 1975.

After the Chinese economic reform, he was rehabilitated by Deng Xiaoping.

Cao served as vice president of the Chinese Translation Association, president of Shanghai Translation Association, vice president of Shanghai Writers Association.

He became a professor at East China Normal University and Xiamen University.

From 1978 to 1998, Cao spent 20 years to translate The Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy into Chinese.

He joined the Russian Writer Association in 2006.

Cao died at age 92 in October 2015.