Professor John Minford 閔福德 was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1946. Being the son of a diplomat, he had lived in many countries around the world before he attended Winchester College in England to study Ancient Greek, Latin and classical literature.
He held a number of teaching posts in mainland China, Hong Kong and New Zealand, including those of Chair Professor of Chinese atUniversity of Auckland[3] and Chair Professor of Translation at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Minford is currently professor of Chinese at The Australian National University.
Professor Minford is married to Rachel May, who is the daughter of noted sinologist David Hawkes. Hawkes was also Minford's teacher at Oxford University. Together, the two co-translated Cao Xueqin's The Story of the Stone, with Hawkes translating the first eighty chapters (Volumes 1-3) and Minford the last forty (Volumes 4-5).
1980 Miao Yüeh 繆越, The Chinese Lyric 論詞, in Soong ed., Song Without Music: Chinese Tz’u Poetry, Hong Kong, Chinese UP, 25-44
1982 Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 & Gao E 高鶚, The Story of the Stone 紅樓夢, vol 4, The Debt of Tears. Penguin Classics & Indiana University Press, 400 pp.
1984 (with Stephen C. Soong 宋淇) Trees on the Mountain: An Anthology of New Chinese Writing, Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, 396 pp.
1986 (with Geremie Barmé) Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience 火種, Far Eastern Economic Review, Hong Kong, 347 pp.
1986 Cao Xueqin & Gao E, The Story of the Stone 紅樓夢, vol 5, The Dreamer Wakes. Penguin Classics & Indiana University Press, 385 pp.
1987 (with Siu-kit Wong) Chinese: Classical, Modern and Humane - Collected Essays of David Hawkes, Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 327 pp.
1987 (with Pang Bingjun & Séan Golden) One Hundred Modern Chinese Poems 中國現代詩一百首. Commercial Press, Hong Kong, 348 pp.
1995 Pieces of Eight: Reflections on Translating The Story of the Stone, in Eoyang and Lin eds., Translating Chinese Literature, Indiana University Press, 178-203.
1997 Louis Cha (Jin Yong 金庸), The Deer and the Cauldron: A Martial Arts Novel 鹿鼎記, The First Book. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, xxxiii & 475 pp.
1998 The Chinese Garden: Death of a Symbol, in Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes (vol 18, no. 3), 257-268.
1999 Death in Macau: In Defence of Orientalism, in Günter Wohlfart et al. eds., Translation und Interpretation, Munich, Wilhelm Fink, 143-156.
1999 Louis Cha (Jin Yong 金庸), The Deer and the Cauldron: A Martial Arts Novel, The Second Book. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, xxxi & 564 pp.[4]
2000 (with Joseph S.M.Lau) Chinese Classical Literature: An Anthology of Translations. 1st vol, New York & Hong Kong, Columbia UP & Chinese UP, lix & 1176 pp. 2nd vol, forthcoming.
2002 Sunzi, The Art of War 孫子兵法. New York, Viking Books. Lvi & 325 pp. (subsequent paperback, Penguin Classics, 2003)
2002 Louis Cha (Jin Yong 金庸), The Deer and the Cauldron: A Martial Arts Novel, The Third Book. Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, xlix & 535 pp. With Rachel
2003 (with Rachel May) A Birthday Book for Brother Stone: For David Hawkes at Eighty. Chinese University Press, xi & 365 pp.
2005 Soong Hsun-leng 宋訓倫, The Fragrant Hermitage 馨菴詞稿. Twenty-nine Lyric Poems, translated from the Chinese, Taiwan, SKS. 5-86.
2006 Pu Songling 蒲松齡, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio 聊齋誌異, London, Penguin Classics, xxxviii + 562 pp. (including lengthy introduction, glossary and bibliography)
2007 (with Brian Holton and Agnes Hung-chong Chan) Leung Ping-kwan, Islands and Continents. Hong Kong University Press, xviii and 128 pp.
2008 Thirty Classical Chinese Fables (Monte James, Beijing)
2014 The I Ching: Book of Change 周易: A New Translation, New York, Viking/Penguin.
Forthcoming, Laozi, Daodejing 道德經: A New Translation (commissioned by Viking/Penguin Classics, New York)
信報月刊專訪節錄： 著名漢學家閔福德（Prof. John Minford）接受本刊專訪時直言，香港年輕人對廣東話的態度，令他震驚。「我請學生用廣東話念詩，他們都念得很快，彷彿感到羞家——學校的教育令他們以為廣東話是次等語言。於是我對年輕人說：不是這樣，請慢慢念，樂在其中、自豪地朗讀，因為廣東話很動聽，是珍貴的中國文化。」
著名漢學家閔福德（Prof. John Minford）接受本刊專訪時直言，香港年輕人對廣東話的態度，令他震驚。「我請學生用廣東話念詩，他們都念得很快，彷彿感到羞家——學校的教育令他們以為廣東話是次等語言。於是我對年輕人說：不是這樣，請慢慢念，樂在其中、自豪地朗讀，因為廣東話很動聽，是珍貴的中國文化。」
廣東話與港人身份認同密不可分，本身也具文化價值。閔福德對香港不陌生，八十年代起在澳紐、中港台的大學教中國文學和翻譯，前前後後在港生活15年，分別於理大、嶺大、港大和中大翻譯系任教，曾翻譯多部香港文學作品。他能聽懂粵語，認為是中文的一種美麗形態（a beautiful form of Chinese）。「也斯每次朗讀自己的作品，都是用廣東話。他認為廣東話是動人的語言，也接近古韻，我很同意。用廣東話念唐詩會押韻，非常悅耳。」
閔：翻譯中國文學作品，覺得他們雖然如此獨特，卻如理雅各說的，可接觸那“Universal Chinese Mind”，所以我很喜歡「人同此心，心同此理」那句話。人的外表可能不同，但基本的慾望、熱情、恐懼、志向往往相近，都想自己好一點，想超脫，接觸到更大的東西，譬如是「大我」而非「小我」，就如剛才說的「道心」與「人心」。
例如我譯一首宋詞，起初可能覺得他很異樣，關於一個歌女，或其實是一個男人代入歌女的語氣，在高樓上遙望，思念剛離去的情人，背景或許是杭州，全都如此「中國」。但慢慢翻譯下去，便發覺那也可在倫敦或巴黎發生，因為潛藏的主題就是人的處境，是寂寞、是愛、是違棄、是覺得人生如夢的感覺，這就不止限於某人，而是人類的事情。《聊齋》也是這樣，那些狐狸精和鬼怪如何奇特，但最終講的仍是人。翻譯家的工作就是要把這發掘出來，每次譯完不同作品，我也覺得自己的人生更豐富，因他們已進入了我的經驗。向這樣陌生的東西躺開心靈可能危險，卻有很大得著，就像跟一堆奇人異士做朋友，還使他們變成自己的一部份，結果不斷在別的書、別的語文裡去探索自我，雖教人疲累不已，卻也很刺激，正正如你剛才提到的 “In search of you I find myself”。
Harriet Mills, Scholar Held in ‘Brainwashing Prison’ in China, Dies at 95
By SAM ROBERTS March 31, 2016
在中國接受「思想改造」的美國學者逝世
SAM ROBERTS 2016年3月31日
Harriet Mills, a Fulbright scholar from New York who was imprisoned as an American spy in Communist China for more than four years and was widely believed to have been a victim of brainwashing, died on March 5 in Mitchelville, Md. She was 95.
The cause was complications of dementia, said her sister, Angie, her only immediate survivor.
米爾斯的姐妹安吉(Angie)表示，她因為失智症併發症而去世。安吉是米爾斯唯一在世的家人。
When she was released in 1955, Ms. Mills described herself as an unpaid “espionage agent” for the United States and Britain, called Americans “warmongers” and said she believed that the United States had engaged in germ warfare during the Korean War.
“The Communists had a perfect right to arrest me,’’ she said. “I confessed from the very day I was arrested.”
「共產黨完全有權逮捕我，」她說。「我從被捕的那天開始懺悔。」
She never publicly recanted, her sister said, but made clear that she been indoctrinated by the Chinese.
安吉表示，她從未公開收回之前的言論，但明確表明自己被中國人洗腦。
“In the conversations I had with her,’’ Angie Mills said, “she said this is something they pressured her to do, something that had been drilled into her, that she was spouting what they said.”
Ms. Mills later wrote a magazine article saying the Chinese government was engaged in the “greatest campaign in human history to reshape the minds of men.”
米爾斯後來為一本雜誌寫了一篇文章，稱中國政府開展了「人類歷史上最偉大的人類思想重塑運動」。
Writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 1959, she said the “complex interplay of psychological and personal factors gives the technique its special character and power,” and concluded that “to be unprogressive in China is not simply a political verdict; it is social suicide as well.”
After leaving China, Ms. Mills spent two years recovering from tuberculosis and rarely discussed her captivity.
離開中國後，米爾斯花了兩年時間才治好結核病，她很少談起被囚禁的事情。
She later taught at Columbia, Cornell and the University of Michigan, specializing in Chinese language and modern literature, before her retirement in 1990. She returned to China for academic conferences in 1976, 1989 and 1999.
She attended American schools in Nanjing and Shanghai, graduated from Wellesley College in 1941 with a degree in English literature, and earned a master’s and doctorate from Columbia University in Chinese. She was a Fulbright scholar and studied at what was then called Peking College of Chinese Studies and Peking University.
When the Korean War erupted in 1950, she and two other Fulbright scholars applied for exit visas, but were rejected.
1950年朝鮮戰爭爆發時，她和其他兩名富布賴特學者申請離境簽證，但遭到拒絕。
In July 1951, they were arrested as counter-revolutionaries, in part because they were being paid by the United States government as Fulbright scholars and possessed a shortwave radio.
According to her sister, Ms. Mills was periodically restrained in handcuffs or ankle chains after repudiating one of her confessions, was denied contact with her family until the fourth year of imprisonment and was subject to “thought reform.”
But when she reached Hong Kong on Oct. 31, 1955, she said that she had been treated “with the utmost consideration and courtesy” and that the Chinese government had “a genuine desire for peace.”
Her release followed intense lobbying by her parents, the American Red Cross and the State Department. The two other Fulbright scholars arrested with her had been released in October 1954 and September 1955.
在米爾斯的父母、美國紅十字會(American Red Cross)和國務院(State Department)的大力遊說下，米爾斯獲釋。其他兩名同時被捕的富布賴特學者分別在1954年10月和1955年9月獲釋。
Her recollections about being interrogated were said to have been delivered to Dr. Harold Wolff, a Cornell neuropsychiatrist, who studied Chinese and Soviet indoctrination techniques for the Central Intelligence Agency.
In his 1956 book, “Brainwashing: The Story of the Men Who Defied It,” Edward Hunter, a propaganda specialist for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, wrote that Ms. Mills’s prison “mind reform” had continued for more than two years, making her “one of the longest occupants of the brainwashing prison.”
在二戰戰略情報局宣傳專家愛德華·洪德(Edward Hunter)1956年出版的《抗拒洗腦者的故事》(Brainwashing: The Story of the Men Who Defied It)一書中寫道，米爾斯在監獄的「思想改造」持續了兩年多，她因此成為「在洗腦監獄關押時間最長的人之一」。
By cooperating, Mr. Hunter said, she was given more responsibility and, after a visit by British Labour Party leaders changed nothing, she became more resigned to her fate, assumed a new sense of belonging and began singing Communist songs.
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