Arthur Waley (1889 - 1966)

Arthur David Waley, CH, CBE (19 August 1889 – 27 June 1966) was an English orientalist and sinologist. Despite translating many Chinese and Japanese classical texts into English, including much poetry and several philosophical works, Waley never travelled to the Far East. In his preface to The Secret History of the Mongols, he writes that he was not a master of many languages, but claims to have known Chinese and Japanese fairly well, a good deal of Ainu and Mongolian, and some Hebrew and Syriac.