Gladys Yang (born January 19, 1919 - died November 18, 1999; 戴乃迭 (Chinese name)) was a British translator of Chinese literature, the wife of another noted translator Yang Xianyi. Her father was a missionary to China, and she herself became a lover of Chinese culture since her childhood.
Born in Peking as Gladys Tayler, she returned to England as a child, and became Oxford's first graduate in Chinese in 1940. She met Yang at Oxford. After their marriage, the Beijing-based couple became prominent translators of Chinese literature into British English during the latter half of the twentieth century at the Foreign Languages Press.
The couple was imprisoned during the cultural revolution. Late in life they spoke out against the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Their biography has been officially banned in China as a result. Gladys Yang died in Beijing in 1999, aged 80.
Yang Xianyi and Gladys Tayler Yang is survived by two daughters, their only son committed suicide in London, UK, in 1979 . [1] While the couple were identified as class enemies and kept in separate prisons from 1964 for seven years, their children were sent to remote factory farms to work. The son becoming mentally ill, never recovered.[2]