Mabel Lee

Mabel Lee (, b. 1939) is an Australian translator, best-known for her English renditions of fiction and essays by Nobel Prize-winning author Gao Xingjian. A third-generation Chinese-Australian born in Warialda, she taught Chinese literature and Asian studies at the University of Sydney, where she is now an Adjunct Professor. An Honorary Fellow of the Australian Society for Asian Humanities, she is among Australia's leading authorities on Chinese cultural affairs. Lee had already begun translation of the poems of Chinese writer, Yang Lian when she met Gao Xingjian, in Paris in 1991. After that meeting, Lee offered to translate ''Soul Mountain'', a project which took seven years, and an additional two to find a publisher for the book in Australia. Following publication, Gao Xingjian became the first Chinese-language writer to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.

Lee's translation won the 2001 New South Wales Premier's Literary Award for Translation despite criticism about the book, and her translation's quality. After her retirement from teaching, she translated another of Gao's novels, ''One Man's Bible'', as well as a short-story collection and a book of his essays. With Agnieszka Syrokomla-Stefanowska, she founded Wild Peony Press, which was active between 1980 and 2009 and published translations from East Asian literature as well as Australian scholarship on Asia.

In 2012, Lee's translation of a collection of essays, ''Gao Xingjian: Aesthetics and Creation'' was published by Cambria Press as part of the Cambria Sinophone World Series headed by Victor H. Mair. Provided by Wikipedia