Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c10.s2.t15.1

v2.c10.s2.t15.1

Shi Zhen (February 5, 1918 - November 4, 2009) was a Chinese translator and an expert on Bengali language. She was a native of Yanshi, Henan, and Shi Zhen was her pen name, while her real name was Shi Suzhen. In 1936, she graduated from Department of Chinese, Women’s School of Liberal Arts, Beiping University. In 1941, she taught in the middle school affiliated to Southwest United University in Kunming. In 1942, she went with her husband Wu Xiaoling to Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan, West Bengal. Wu Xiaoling taught at the Cheena Bhavana, during which period Shi Zhen had a chance to study and master Bengali. Later, she became a graduate student at Rabindra Bhavan and obtained a fair knowledge of Rabindranath Tagore’s works and Bengali literature. She returned to China in 1946, and taught as a lecturer at Department of Oriental Languages, Peking University, worked under the India Section of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and later went to CASS, Institute of Foreign Literature to translate and study Bengali literature. She is the first Chinese to translate Tagore’s works from Bengali. She joined China Writers Association in 1958, and was a council member of Translators Association of China. She died in the afternoon of November 4, 2009, at the age of 91.