Martha Pui Yiu Cheung

Professor Martha Pui Yiu Cheung was born on 17 July 1953 in Hong Kong, and passed away on 10 September 2013. She attended school at the Sacred Heart Canossian College and read English Literature and Language at the University of Hong Kong. She started her academic career as a Lecturer (equivalent to the grade of Assistant Professor) in 1978, teaching in the Department of English Studies and Comparative Literature of her Alma Mater. In 1980 she was awarded a Commonwealth Academic Staff Scholarship to undertake PhD studies in English Literature at the University of Kent at Canterbury, and focused her research on the works of William Golding. In 1991, she moved to the Department of Translation of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and in 1995 to the Translation Programme of Hong Kong Baptist University, where she later became Director of the Centre for Translation in 2004, and Chair Professor in Translation in 2007. She also served as University Associate Vice-President from 2008 to 2010.

During her highly productive career, Professor Cheung served on the editorial boards of a number of prestigious international journals, including The Translator and Translation Studies, and was Visiting Professor and PhD Supervisor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Visiting Professor at Sichuan International Studies University and the School of Interpreting and Translation Studies of the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and Distinguished Visiting Professor and Honorary Director of the Centre for the Study of Translation and Globalization, Faculty of Foreign Languages for Economics and Trade, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. She was Nida Professor of the 2011 Nida School for Translation Studies, and CETRA Professor of the 2009 Doctoral Summer School at the Centre for Translation Studies of the Catholic University of Leuven.

 

 

Professor Cheung’s translations of Chinese Literature into English are highly valued. They include Han Shaogong’s Homecoming(1992), Liu Sola’s Blue Sky Green Sea (1993), and numerous works of Hong Kong poets such as Leung Ping Kwan. She co-edited (with Jane C.C. Lai) An Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama (1997) and co-translated (also with Jane C.C. Lai) 100 Excerpts from Zen Buddhist Texts (1997). She was Editor-in-Chief (Chinese translation) of the Oxford Children’s Encyclopedia (9 volumes, 2082 entries, 1998), and Editor-in-Chief (English translation) of An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica in Hong Kong (506 entries, 2004). She also edited Hong Kong Collage: Contemporary Stories and Writings (1998) and a Special Issue of The Translator entitled Chinese Discourses on Translation. Positions and Perspectives (2009). Her groundbreaking An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation, Volume 1: From Earliest Times to the Buddhist Project was first published by St. Jerome in 2006. The second volume of the anthology, From the Late Twelfth Century to 1800, was completed and brought out posthumously by her colleague, Dr Robert Neather, in 2016.

Professor Cheung’s main research interests included the discourse(s) and metadiscourse(s) of translation, the relation between translation theory and the practice of translation, and the changing meanings of the concept of “translation” in different translation traditions.

The full list of Professor Cheung’s publications is available here.