A Report On The E-C Translation Of Asian Health Secrets (Chapters 36-37)

This is an E-C translation practice report.The selected texts are Chapter 36,“Herbs for Memory and Mental Clarity,” and Chapter 37,“Herbs for High Performance,” from the book Asian Health Secrets by Letha Hadady,D.Ac,a renowned American herbalist and nationally certified acupuncturist.Asian Health Secrets is the first interactive guide to herbal medicine,presenting a range of breakthrough guidelines for self-diagnoses that help readers understand how to evaluate their personal health needs and use readily available herbs to treat common maladies,boost the immune system,prevent illness,maintain wellness,and ensure longevity.Chapters 36 and 37 selected for this translation practice report are mainly based on the Five-element Theory of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)and the Theory of Three Reasons of Tibetan medicine to analyze how to use some Chinese patent medicine or herbal medicine to regulate unhealthy emotions,improve memory,enhance concentration and achieve personal goals.The source text of this E-C translation practice involves many theories and knowledge of TCM,and the difficulties in the translation process are mainly reflected in the lexical,syntactic and textual levels.At the lexical level,the difficulties include the translation of TCM terminologies and polysemous words,as well as the non-equivalence of the semantic meaning under the influence of context.Difficulties at the syntactic level lie in how to deal with the logical mess of the sentence meaning according to the original sequence,and sentences with TCM characteristics and an implicit meaning.The difficulties at the textual level are mainly demonstrated in how to achieve the readability of the target text and reproduce the semantic continuity of the source text,so that the translation can reflect the author’s true intention,convey appropriate information,maintain the style of the original work,and achieve the purpose of communication.In order to solve the difficulties at the above three levels,the translator first carried out the source text analysis,collected several parallel texts and established a termbase(TB),Secondly,the translator ensured the accuracy of text translation by consulting TCM parallel texts and massive online resources,and the TB was applied to ensure the consistency and accuracy of terms in the translation process.Finally,the quality of translation output is guaranteed through the quality assurance(QA)tools of Jeemaa and repeated translator revision.In view of the lexical difficulties,the translator adopted annotation,the selection of word meanings,the extension of word meanings and the conversion of word classes.The translator dealt with the syntactic difficulties by reinventing sentence structure,paraphrasing and amplification.In addition,the translator also used reiteration and omission to handle the difficulties at the textual level.Through this translation practice,the translator has enriched her own accumulation of TCM terms,consolidated the translation methods she had learned,realized the advantages of CAT tools,and gained her own translation practice experience.The translator hopes to help more people understand TCM and realize that TCM is not as complicated as imagined.In this way,people can also conduct a simple self-diagnosis and take appropriate actions according to the situation.