A Research On The Standardization Of The English Translation Of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine is regarded one shining pearl of the greatest cultural heritages of Chinese ancient civilizations, it is a comprehensive and unique scientific system with remarkable curative effects and few side effects during the several thousand years of medical practice and has proved to be an extremely useful method to prevent and treat diseases. Because of the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine, World Health Organization recommended it as useful experience to the world and more and more people in the world began to realize its importance.The English translation of traditional Chinese medicine serves as a bridge for the traditional Chinese medicine to be widely accepted by the people all over the world. However, due to a series of reasons, such as the long history of traditional Chinese medicine, the unique theoretical system of traditional Chinese medicine and the special characteristics of the language of traditional Chinese medicine, this bridge doesn't exert its function satisfactorily. In practice, there are still large accounts of problems including the inconsistent and inaccurate translation of the terminology of traditional Chinese medicine, mistranslation caused by wrong understanding, lack of unification of its translating standards and principles and no systematic researches of translation theories on traditional Chinese medicine. These all cause the foreign learners'puzzlements and hamper the further development of the traditional Chinese medicine.The author here makes a systematic exposition on the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine according to her own practical experiences and the valuable experiences of other translators. By writing this thesis, she wants to do her share of efforts to expand the influence of traditional Chinese medicine in the world, promote the academic exchanges between traditional Chinese medicine and western medicine. Meanwhile, the author proposes measures to adapt to the developing situation of"the enthusiasm for traditional Chinese medicine"in the world, make systematic researches on the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine and seek for the solutions to such problems in the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine as diversified translations, mistranslations and being short of unified translating standards and principles and systematic researches of translation theories. The main body of this thesis is divided into three chapters. The first chapter points out the existing problems in the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine, namely, the translation is inconsistent and inaccurate and the translated textbooks and works on traditional Chinese medicine are lack on the basis of the summary of the development and the current achievement of the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine, then the thesis continues to analyze the objective reasons and the subjective reasons for those existing problems.The second chapter illustrates that to overcome all the existing problems in the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine, we need first of all analyze the directing theory of the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine, which mainly includes the four fundamental translating methods—the method of literal translation, the method of free translation, the method of Loan-word translation and the method of simplifying translation—under the guideline of the four special principles of the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine—the scientific principle, the concise principle, the national principle and the restrictive principle.The third chapter proposes measures to achieve the standardization of the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine on the basis of the analyses of different aspects of the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine. The measures suggested by the author include the subjective ones and the objective ones which involve many aspects such as education, policy-making, the government administration and so on.To sum up, the standardization of the English translation of traditional Chinese medicine needs untiring efforts from the authority, the researchers and the scholars.