Zhu Shenghao

He translated a total of 31 of Shakespearean plays, 27 of which were published before the founding of the People's Republic of China. Due to the Cultural Revolution starting from 1966 and other social turbulence around the 1950s, it was not until 1978 that Zhu's completed texts were finally published in Beijing. In order to adapt the plays to Chinese reading habits, Zhu did not adopt the chronological arrangement of the original Oxford Edition; instead, he divided these plays into four categories: comedy, tragedy, historical play, and miscellaneous. The first printing of Shakespeare's complete works in Chinese marks a significant event in the study of Shakespearean drama in China.

He was married to Song Qingru (Chinese: 宋清如) in Shanghai on May 1, 1942. He died on December 26, 1944, due to pulmonary tuberculosis, at the age of 32.

On May 1, 1942, Zhu married his university alumna Song Qingru and held their wedding in Shanghai. In June they went to Changshu and lived with Zhu's mother-in-law, where he finished retranslating all the lost manuscripts. In January 1943, the couple moved to Jiaxing and settled down, where Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Hamlet were translated. In the autumn of the same year, Zhu's health suffered a decline. In failing health and stricken circumstances, he worked on his translations of Shakespeare until his death in December 1944. He translated a total of thirty-one plays, all of which were published posthumously.

The war with Japan, which broke out in 1937, disrupted many large projects, but Zhu Shenghao, literally gave his life to translating the complete plays of Shakespeare. Though the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War shattered his translation schedule, Zhu never stopped working. His manuscripts were destroyed when he escaped from Japanese-occupied Shanghai. Zhu later returned to the Shanghai foreign concessions to resume his translation work, only to find himself on the run from the Japanese again with the outbreak of World War II, and his manuscripts were again destroyed. Zhu once mentioned, "Different versions of Shakespeare collection and a variety of notes, commentaries, research papers, and literary criticism that I collected all these years no less than one hundred copies have been destroyed by gunfire."

Before Zhu Shenghao started working on Shakespeare in 1935, a number of famous authors, including Liang Shiqiu (also known as Liang Shih-chiu), had already published translations. After having looked at them carefully, Zhu concluded: "Chinese readers have heard of Shakespeare for a long time. Well-known writers also tried to publish their translations. But as I looked at the different translations available, I found a few of them to be rough and hasty, although most of them are too overcautious and rigid. Because of this rigidity, not only is the original allure completely lost but also the language is so obscure that it becomes almost unintelligible. It is impossible to grasp the meaning quickly. We cannot blame Shakespeare for this shortcoming; his translators are the ones responsible for this"

In 1933 Zhu graduated from Zhijiang University and worked as an English editor at Shanghai World Book Company, where he participated in the compilation of the English-Chinese Four-Use Dictionary. In the spring of 1935, impressed by his talent, Zhan Wenhu, Zhu's senior colleague at the Book Company, encouraged Zhu to translate Shakespeare. In 1936, at the age of twenty-three Zhu started translating The Tempest into Chinese, with the understanding that the World Book Company would publish his complete translations of Shakespearean plays.

Zhu Shenghao (Chinese: 朱生豪; pinyin: Zhū Shēngháo) (February 2, 1912 – December 26, 1944) was a Chinese translator. Born in Jiaxing, Zhejiang of China, he was among the first few in China who translated the works of William Shakespeare's into Chinese language. His translations are well respected by domestic and overseas scholars.

Zhu was born in a dilapidated merchant family on February 2, 1912. His father was Lu Yun, and his mother was Zhu Peixia. In 1917 he went to Jiaxing Enlightened Primary School and graduated in 1921, ranking the first in achievement. His mother died the winter of 1922, and his father in 1924. In 1929 he graduated from Xiuzhou Secondary School and was recommended by his high school principal to enter Zhijiang University in Hangzhou and received a scholarship.