Ely Finch

Ely Finch is an Australian translator and consultant linguist who specialises in historical texts written in Literary (Classical) Chinese, Cantonese, and other southern Chinese languages. His main focus to date has been texts that pertain to the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Chinese diaspora in Australia, with respect to which he has undertaken work for historians, archaeologists, universities, museums, family-history researchers, historical societies, doctoral students and others. Being a speaker of English, Mandarin and Cantonese, with some knowledge of Teochew and the See Yip language, and a broad interest in pre-twentieth-century writing of virtually all genres and time periods, as well as in the history of China and the Chinese diaspora, Ely is also happy to consider commissions that relate to Hong Kong, Canada, New Zealand, the U.S.A. and southern and/or pre-modern China. Ely’s largest translation is Australia’s and possibly the West’s first Chinese-language novel, Wong Shee Ping’s The Poison of Polygamy: A Social Novel.

Ely Finch

Image Courtesy of: Ely Finch