Howard Goldblatt


Howard Goldblatt is an American literary translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction, including The Taste of Apples by Huang Chunming and The Execution of Mayor Yin by Chen Ruoxi. Goldblatt also translated works of Chinese novelist and 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Mo Yan, including six of Mo Yan's novels and collections of stories. He was a research professor of Chinese at the University of Notre Dame from 2002 to 2011.

Biography

Goldblatt encountered Chinese for the first time as a young man, during his tour of duty with the US Navy, sent to military base in Taiwan at the beginning of the 1960s. He stayed there and studied at the Mandarin Center for two more years before returning to the US. He then enrolled at the Chinese language program of the San Francisco State University. Goldblatt received a Bachelor of Arts from California State University, Long Beach, a Master of Arts from San Francisco State University in 1971, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Indiana University Bloomington in 1974.
Following criticism of Mo Yan's political stance after winning the Nobel Prize, Goldblatt wrote a defence of him in The Guardian.
He worked as a professor of Chinese literature at San Francisco State University, University of Colorado-Boulder and University of Notre Dame.

Awards

Selected translations