Chi-chen Wang (Chinese: 王際真; pinyin: Wáng Jìzhēn; 1899–2001) was a Chinese-born American literary scholar and translator.
His father Wang Caiting (Chinese: 王寀廷; 1877–1952) achieved the Jinshi degree, the highest level of the civil service examinations and was a county magistrate in Guangdong, where Chi-chen lived for several years.
On his 1929 visit, the poet Xu Zhimo introduced him to Shen Congwen, a highly regarded novelist and short-story writer.
Wm Theodore de Bary's history of the program notes that Wang expected his students to not only be competent in reading Chinese but fluent and idiomatic English, particularly if they were native speakers.
[6] One of his students, Burton Watson, who would become an eminent translator, recalled taking an advanced course with Wang in 1950 reading two essays from the Shiji in classical Chinese.
Watson continued that the hours spent with him that year "left me with the conviction that in translating such texts, it is not enough merely to bring across the meaning of the Chinese; one must do so in a manner that reads like natural idiomatic English.
"[6] Another Columbia student who went on to a successful academic career, Harriet Mills, remarked that Wang Chi-chen's translations were what first interested her in Lu Xun.