Language loving professor commemorated with new book
For dictionary compilers, researchers and users alike, today was a day to remember Professor Lu Gusun as a new book commemorating his achievements as a teacher, a lexicographer, a translator, and a friend, was released today.
The 275-page book is a collection of 54 articles written by Prof. Lu’s relatives, colleagues, students, and friends, including renowned scholars like Yu Qiuyu and Ye Yang.
Widely regarded as one of China’s intellectual heavyweights, the professor died last year because of a cerebral hemorrhage.
During the launch ceremony of the book, which was also a symposium on dictionary-making at Fudan University, Thomas Creamer, linguist and long-time friend of Prof. Lu, showed a letter the professor wrote to him more than 20 years ago after he published The English-Chinese Dictionary.
“If you ask Prof. Lu his occupation, lexicographer would not be his first response,” Creamer said. “He would probably say teacher first, writer second, and maybe lexicographer third.”
Indeed, Prof. Lu planted the seed of love for dictionaries in many of his students, who later also became teachers and dictionary compilers.
Gao Yongwei, a lexicographer and vice dean of the College of Foreign Languages and Literature at Fudan University, said it was Prof. Lu that changed his life by guiding him to word-watching and dictionary-making.
More importantly, the dictionaries made by Prof. Lu have become a landmark for many.
Hugo Tseng, a professor of English at Soochow University in Taiwan, said Prof. Lu's dictionaries are always his reference when he writes articles on English translation.
Prof. Lu was the editor-in-chief of China’s most prominent and comprehensive English-Chinese dictionaries. He was also an acclaimed Shakespeare expert and a respected English-Chinese and Chinese-English literary translator and commentator.
He was interviewed many times by Shanghai Daily reporters, commenting on various issues related to literature and English studies. He also gave a lecture to Shanghai Daily staff a few years ago, encouraging reporters to further improve their English skills and write better stories for readers.
Lu was born in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, and spent his entire academic career at Fudan University, where he majored in English language and literature.
The professor was working on the second part of his first Chinese-English dictionary before he became ill.