David Hawkes (6 July 1923 – 31 July 2009) was a British sinologist and translator. After being introduced to Japanese through codebreaking during the Second World War, Hawkes studied Chinese and Japanese at Oxford University between 1945 and 1947 before studying at Peking University from 1948 to 1951. He then returned to Oxford, where he completed his D.Phil. and later became Shaw Professor of Chinese. In 1971, Hawkes resigned his position to focus entirely on his translation of the famous Chinese novel The Story of the Stone (also known as Dream of the Red Chamber), which was published in three volumes between 1973 and 1980. He retired in 1984 to rural Wales before returning to Oxford in his final years.

Hawkes was known for his translations that preserved the "realism and poetry" of the original Chinese, and was the foremost non-Chinese Redology expert.

David Hawkes was born on 6 July 1923 in London, England, and grew up in East London. He entered Oxford University in 1942 as a student in Christ Church, where he studied the Latin and Greek Classics. After his first year, during the height of the Second World War, Hawkes was recruited to study Japanese in London. His talent for East Asian languages was soon recognized by his military superiors, and he was made an instructor to the Japanese codebreakers. After the war's end in 1945, Hawkes returned to Oxford, where he transferred from Christ Church into the newly established Honours School of Chinese, whose only teacher was the former missionary E. R. Hughes (1883–1956).

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