Burton DeWitt Watson (June 13, 1925 – April 1, 2017) was an American scholar and translator[1] of both Chinese and Japanese literature. He was born in New Rochelle, New York.
Watson received awards including the Gold Medal Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University in 1979, the PEN Translation Prize in 1982[2] for his translation with Hiroaki Sato of From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry, and again in 1995 for Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o. He also received the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation in 2015.[3]
Watson died on April 1, 2017 in Kamagaya, Japan, aged 91.[4]