Explicitation In Translating Informative Texts

Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)is a medical science that has been gradually formed,constantly enriched and developed by the Chinese people of all ethnic groups through thousands of years of production,life practice and struggle against diseases.The international recognition of TCM has been enhanced.Therefore,it is imperative for TCM to"go global",and this internationalization process is inseparable from the translation of TCM literature.This article is based on the author’s practice of translating TCM texts from Chinese to English.The main objective of the translation project is the popularization and dissemination of the informative text-TCM Internal Medicine,which is a clinical discipline that explains the pathogenesis,syndrome,and treatment principles of internal diseases through TCM theory.The relevant literature involves many concepts,terms,and expressions that are highly characteristic of China,and it is difficult to find completely equivalent forms in English.Most TCM texts combine medical theory and literature,making it a significant challenge for many translators to retain the cultural characteristics of TCM while conveying the meaning accurately.Guided by the explicitation theory,the author mainly applied translation strategies such as adding explanatory notes,concretizing abstract concepts,highlighting sentence subjects,making internal logic more explicit,and clarifying cultural information in the process of translating TCM texts.The report explored the translation strategies on lexical,syntactical and cultural levels,aiming to convey the original informative meaning of TCM texts,while also highlighting the language and cultural characteristics of TCM,making the translated text more in line with the reading habits of the target language readers.This translation practice is a specific attempt to apply explicitation strategies to the translation of TCM texts.The findings of this report suggest that explicitation has significant practicality and operability for translating informative text,and it has certain reference value for future translation of similar texts.