Burton Watson

Burton Watson
Born (1925-06-13) June 13, 1925
New Rochelle, New York, United States
Occupation Scholar, translator
Nationality American
Education Columbia University
Period 1962–present
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 華滋生
Simplified Chinese 华滋生
Alternative Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 伯頓 沃森
Simplified Chinese 伯顿 沃森
Japanese name
Kana バートン ワトソン

Burton DeWitt Watson (born June 13, 1925) is an American scholar and translator[1] of both Chinese and Japanese literature. He has received awards including the Gold Medal Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University in 1979, the PEN Translation Prize in 1982[2] for his translation with Hiroaki Sato of From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, and again in 1995 for Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o. He also received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2015.[3]

Life and career

Burton Watson was born on June 13, 1925, in New Rochelle, New York. In 1943, at age 17, Watson dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Navy, and was stationed on repair vessels in the South Pacific. His ship was in the Marshall Islands when World War II ended in August 1945, and the following month sailed to Japan to anchor at the Yokosuka Naval Base, where Watson had his first direct experiences with Japan and East Asia. Watson was discharged from the Navy in 1946 and was accepted into Columbia University, where he majored in Chinese. His main Chinese teachers were the American Sinologist L. Carrington Goodrich and Chinese scholar Wang Chi-chen (王際真; 1899–2001). At that time, most of the Chinese curriculum focused on learning to read Chinese characters, as it was assumed that any "serious students" could later learn to speak Chinese by going to China.[4] He also took one year of Japanese. Watson spent five years studying at Columbia, earning a B.A. in 1949 and an M.A. in 1951.

After receiving his M.A. in 1951, Watson hoped to move to China for further study, but the Communist Party of China had closed to the country to Americans. He was unable to find any positions in Taiwan or Hong Kong, and so moved to Japan as a Ford Foundation Overseas Fellow.[2] In 1956 he earned a Ph.D. from Columbia with a doctoral dissertation on 1st century BC historian Sima Qian entitled "Ssu-ma Ch'ien: The Historian and His Work".[1] He worked as an English teacher at Doshisha University in Kyoto, as a research assistant to Yoshikawa Kōjirō, who was Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Kyoto University,[5] and as a member of Ruth Fuller Sasaki's team translating Buddhist texts into English.[1] He has also taught at Stanford and Columbia as a professor of Chinese. He moved to Japan in 1973, where he remains to this day, and has devoted much of his time to translation.

He and colleague Professor Donald Keene frequently participated in the seminars of William Theodore de Bary given to students at Columbia University.

Translations

Translations from the Chinese include:

Translations from Japanese include:

Many of Watson's translations have been published through the Columbia University Press.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Stirling 2006, pg. 92
  2. 1 2 "Ahadada Books-Burton Watson". Retrieved 2008-06-03.
  3. ↑ "Burton Watson Named Winner of 2015 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation". PEN/America. April 24, 2015. Retrieved April 30, 2015.
  4. ↑ Balcom (2005).
  5. ↑ "Harvard University Press: An Introduction to Sung Poetry by Kojiro Yoshikawa". Retrieved 2009-06-01.
  6. ↑ Qian Sima; Burton Watson (January 1993). Records of the Grand Historian: Han dynasty. Renditions-Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-08164-1.

References

External links

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