Suicide follows hard life as a translator

The suicide of Sun Zhongxu, the Chinese translator of JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and George Orwell's 1984, has sparked discussions over its causes among his fans.

According to media reports, people close to Sun's family and sources from the publishing industry say Sun, 41, took his life on Aug 30 in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong province, after a long struggle with depression.

There were early signs of a sensitive, tragic life as Sun had admitted in previous interviews that the story of troubled American teenager Holden Caulfield had greatly influenced his life, describing it as "the book that led me to the road of translation".