The role played by sinologists in translating modern Chinese literature has been well acknowledged in the academic circle, but the existing studies of sinologists’ translations mainly focus on their textual strategies, few studies scrutinize the relationship between a sinologist’s research and his translation. This paper attempts to investigate how a sinologist’s research influences his translation, taking as a case the American sinologist Jeffrey C. Kinkley. By examining all his three published English translation books of Shen Congwen’s works, this study describes and analyzes Kinkley’s selection of texts for translation, his translator’s forewords and prefaces, and his method of rendering textual details, with an aim to explore what effect his research has made on his translation strategy. It discovers that the broad scope of the texts selected reveals his holistic and historic vision as a historian and sinologist, the unique concerns in his forewords and prefaces are manifestation of his in-depth research, and the in-text and extra-text explanations unveil his way of training as an academic researcher. Kinkley’s research provides rich resources and inspirations for his translation, and his thick translation strategy fulfils the translation function as knowledge creation and education. This empirical study serves a good purpose for further probing sinologists’ translation of Chinese literature and culture.