Harmony And Balance In TCM Textbook Translation —From The Perspective Of Eco-translatology

With the deepening of Sino-Western exchanges, TCM almost has its footprint on each part of the world. Globalization of TCM put forward higher requirements for TCM translation, especially for translation of TCM textbooks, which are the important media that transfer TCM knowledge to international students. Theoretical and practical research on TCM textbook translation is therefore of great importance both in the field of TCM and in the circles of translation.This thesis uses the "Eco-translatology" theory proposed by Professor Hu Gengshen to study the harmony between TCM textbook translators and its translational eco-environment, as well as the balance within the translational eco-environment, which comes from a "harmony and balance" point of view.Using the ten bilingual TCM textbooks published by People’s Medical Publishing House in 2007 as material, this study summarizes the characteristics of bilingual TCM textbooks, and identifies the problems existing in current TCM textbook translation. For example, there are a wide variety of translation versions, which lack integration. The translators are short of TCM knowledge interpretation capabilities of traditional Chinese. Social environment that people are showing a blind pursuit of economic interests makes the translator blundering and translation quality drop. Most of the textbooks are the result of co-translation, so it is hard to totally unify the translation style of one translated version. These problems are mainly caused by the restrictions from both the subjective and the objective translational eco-environment of TCM textbooks. The subjective translational eco-environment is the "translation community" that consists of the translators, the authors, the publishers, the readers, etc.:the objective translational eco-environment includes the target texts, the original texts, as well as the sociopolitical, economic and cultural factors. Therefore, this thesis suggests a joint effort of the members in "translation community" to solve these problems and achieve eventually harmony between translators and translational eco-environment, as well as balance inside translational eco-environment of TCM textbooks. By improving the translators’ quality and giving full play to the leadership of the translator-in-chief, the translator-centeredness should be ensured, thus the translators could make multi-dimentional adaptations and selections on the basis of a comprehension of both the subjective and the objective translational eco-environment. The authors, that is the compilers of the Chinese content, should decide the complexity of the original texts according to the language ability and TCM knowledge background of the target readers. For the publishers, it is important for them to seek a balance among the efficiency, quantity, profit and quality of the textbooks. Last but not least, the target readers, that is, the international students and TCM teachers, should give real feedbacks and suggestions to help the translators make reasonal selections. Only in this way, could the content of target texts be unified and quality be ensured.