Interpreter who took secrets to his grave

Cheng Yang-ping, the only Hongkonger privy to the secret Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong's sovereignty, has died. He was 85 years old.

Cheng was an interpreter for Britain during the talks in the 1980s. He died in hospital in Nanchang , Jiangxi province, on Friday. His wife, Geng Yan, said he had been in poor health since suffering a stroke several years ago.

Cheng worked for the BBC in London before being recruited in 1972 by the British colonial government in Hong Kong to establish training for simultaneous interpreters. Before that, he worked for RTHK forerunner Radio Hong Kong and All India Radio in Delhi.

The bespectacled, bearded Cheng was interpreter for Hong Kong governor Murray MacLehose during his visit to Beijing in the late 1970s in which the question of Britain's 99-year lease of the New Territories was raised.

Cheng, who was born in Hong Kong and educated in Guangdong and Shanghai, went on to serve MacLehose's successor, Edward Youde, throughout the Sino-British negotiations.

Discussing the differing roles of an interpreter and a translator, Cheng once likened an interpreter to a cab driver and a translator to a chauffeur of a Rolls Royce. Time was the chief concern of the former, while the latter's priority was the comfort and safety of his passengers, he said.