Nils Göran David Malmqvist (6 June 1924 – 17 October 2019)[1][2][3] was a Swedish linguist, literary historian, sinologist and translator.

[10] Back in Stockholm, his career as a translator also began, with a series of interpretations of Tang dynasty lyrics in the anthology Det förtätade ögonblicket (The compact moment).

The same year he published the translation of Lao She’s short stories in Det sorgsna skrattet (The sorrowful laugh).

[13] In 1974, Malmqvist published the popular volume Kinesiska är inte svårt (Chinese isn't difficult).

[15] He also translated the five volumes of Xī Yóu Jì (Journey to the West, with the Swedish title Färden till västern), a 16th-century story of how in the 7th century the pilgrim Xuanzang brings the holy writings of Buddhism from India to China.

[17] Malmqvist here follows Karlgren's path through the pioneering era of Sinology from his early dialectological fieldwork in China in 1910–1912, which aimed at reconstructing the sound pattern of ancient Chinese.