 Madam President, ladies, gentlemen, and colleagues, by celebrating the exceptional oeuvre of Professor Howard Goldblatt here today, we not only pay homage to his achievements, but we also call attention to the school's longstanding tradition of excellence in both the study and the practice of literary translation. Many of us who teach literature have considered it to be our professional duty from time to time to publish translations into English or other European languages of work from the areas we study. In many cases, such translations are research outputs in their own right. More recently, many of us have also been inspired by the theoretical turn in translation studies, calling attention to the social, historical, and cultural contexts in which translations appear, and the underlying reasons for translators to make specific choices in the process of rendering creative writing from one language into another language. As Howard Goldblatt himself has pointed out, the question of why certain translation choices are made is even more crucial when translating from Chinese into English than when translating into English from, say, French or Spanish. This is because there are no etymological links between Chinese and English words. Therefore, the translator has different options available for literally every single word that is translated, and the likelihood that the resulting English translation could be translated back into exactly the same Chinese text is virtually zero. Howard Goldblatt has been engaged in making these difficult choices and publishing the outcome since the 1970s. Recent interviews with him mention that he has published over 30 book-length translations of Chinese fiction. By my count, the number is more likely to be around 50. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most prolific and successful translator of modern Chinese literature into any European language. He has translated almost every major contemporary Chinese novelists, as well as a number of outstanding writers from Taiwan and elsewhere in the signophone world. So influential is his oeuvre that it, in turn, has become the object of scholarship in the field of translation studies. In 2011, the Chinese scholar Lumin Hong devoted an entire monograph to a neurological analysis of Goldblatt's translations. Growing up in California, where he went to college in the late 1950s, the young Howard Goldblatt could in no way have foreseen how his later career would turn out. In recent interviews, he has confessed to having been a less than stellar undergraduate. He walked out of a class where the teacher wrote a Chinese character on the blackboard because he considered it an unsensical waste of time. Everything changed when he joined the US Navy and was sent out to Taiwan, where he ended up spending a number of years acquiring admirable fluency in Chinese, while at the same time reading widely in literature from around the world. When he returned to the US, he went to graduate school, obtaining an MA from San Francisco State University in 1971, and a PhD from Indiana University in 1974. The monograph that came out of his PhD thesis on the female author Xiaohong is still required reading for students of modern Chinese literature. His discovery of Xiaohong predated the rediscovery of her work by Chinese scholars by almost a decade. She is now widely recognized as one of modern China's best novelists. Later in his academic career, which saw him teaching at San Francisco State before taking up a chair at the University of Colorado at Boulder, followed by a spell as research professor at the University of Notre Dame, Howard Goldblatt increasingly focused on translation. His style of translation, firmly focused on the needs of his readership, constituted a breakthrough in sinological translation conventions. His remarkable ability to discover Chinese literary talent and his willingness to represent them if necessary in negotiations with Western publishers saw him combine the roles of scholar, critic, translator, editor, and agent in a way that had never been done before. In addition to translating a large part of what is now considered the canon of contemporary Chinese fiction, he was also responsible for the Columbia anthology of modern Chinese literature, which he co-edited with Joseph Lau, and which is the standard textbook for the modern Chinese literature course at SOAS and at many other universities. Howard Goldblatt's proudest moment prior to today, of course, came in 2012 when the Chinese writer Mo Yan, whom he had discovered in the late 1980s and whose novels he has been translating ever since, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Many in our field, myself included, feel that the honor bestowed on Mo Yan was as much the recognition of the author's brilliance as of his English translator's unrivaled ability to produce great literature. Madam President, it is my privilege now to present Howard Goldblatt for the award of Doctor of Letters and to invite him to address this assembly. Madam President, Director Webley, distinguished colleagues, graduating students, ladies and gentlemen, Dajah Hall. Nearly half a century ago, in June 1966, the great British translator of Asian literature, Arthur Whaley, died in the city. Within weeks, a young American gadabout sat down for his first lesson in the Chinese language in far off Taiwan. In the view of some, that was a mere coincidence. It remains an open question. At the time, young Goldblatt did not know just how profoundly that providential connection would affect his life in the years to come. But Whaley's brilliance, his instincts, his understated passion, and his nose for choosing the right thing to translate proved to be the brightest light on the young man's personal journey as a mediator of writing in two diverse and beautiful languages and literary arts. Whaley once wrote about finding a work so exciting that he would be haunted day and night by the urge to put it into English and remain in a state of restlessness and fret until he did. To my good fortune, I found one of those in the very first novel I ever translated by an unheralded manchurian-born woman who would die in Hong Kong at the age of 30. Hulan He-Dran, Tales of Hulan River, is still in print, and Xiao Hong has earned the status in China of national treasure. Since that early effort, I have encountered other fine works, but only once or twice have I again felt that frisson. I think Whaley would have understood, for he was as demanding as I, or I as he. That quest is what keeps us going, the idea that as midwives, we can, on occasion, find a literary masterpiece and turn it into a world classic. Translation exists in the interstice between creator and recreator. It is a precarious position, easily misunderstood, but ignored at one's peril. Maybe that's why many of us do it. We are risk takers for every choice we make from what to translate to how to replicate the qualities that drew us to the work. Creating a beautiful and faithful literary doppelganger is a challenge. That knowledge must have been what motivated Borges to write, and I quote, perhaps the translator's work is more subtle, more civilized than that of the writer. The translator clearly comes after the writer. Translation is a more advanced stage of civilization. That remains my all-time favorite quotation, of course. The honor of being bestowed here is humbling, the ceremony one of the most memorable in my professional life. The day, of course, as well as the future, belonged to you. So get into your street clothes, salute your parents, then march out and change the world. And those of you who seek secret pleasures and anonymity go translate a novel. Thank you.