张荣昌

Public information about Zhang Rongchang is limited, and no clear record of his identity or career is available. Judging from the twelve works held in the library, however, he is known to Chinese readers mainly as a translator of German-language literature. His representative translations include the three-volume Collected Novels of Kafka, The Metamorphosis, The Castle, and Robert Musil's long novel The Man Without Qualities in two volumes, as well as The Metamorphosis: Selected Short Stories of Kafka. These works are generally classified as classics, social novels, and foreign literature, and they focus on modernist writing about the individual's situation, bureaucratic systems, and problems of identity. His translations are generally faithful and fluent, preserving the cool, meticulous narrative rhythm of the originals and offering Chinese readers a relatively reliable text for understanding Kafka and Musil.