A Report On The C-E Translation Of Tuinaology (Excerpt)

Tuina is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy that regulates the physiology through manipulation on the human body,so as to prevent and treat diseases.Since the 1990 s,with the spread of alternative therapy,Tuina,as a non-drug therapy,has attracted attention of the medical community in the world.It is widely used in the fields of health preservation,rehabilitation,treatment,prevention and so on.As a branch of massage theoretical system,the Tuinaology has become an essential discipline to promote the exchanges between Eastern and Western medicine.In contrast,the English translation of Tuina has not yet formed a unified standard for the terms in the transmission process of traditional Chinese medicine to the West.There are phenomena such as multi-translation for one terminology,the same translation for different terminologies and mixed translation of multiple terminologies,which hinders the globalization of traditional Chinese medicine.The traditional Chinese medicine textbook is the embodiment of Chinese medicine modernization,which meets the needs of modern medicine development.This translation project selects Tuinaology,a general textbook for higher education of traditional Chinese medicine,as the source text.Under the guidance of Katharina Reiss’ s text typology theory,the translator analyzes the text characteristics and discusses the translation methods with specific cases at lexical,syntactic and discourse levels.According to the main functions of text,Reiss divides texts into three types: informative text,expressive text and operative text,and expounds the relation between text types and translation methods.The source text is a typically informative text with rigorous logic,focusing on the transmission of knowledge,opinions and other information.In order to convey text information accurately and completely,the translator needs to choose appropriate translation methods in line with the characteristics of the text.At the lexical level,transliteration,literal translation,free translation,paraphrase,imitation and other methods are adopted for the translation of Tuina terms.At the syntactic level,for the translation of four-character patterns,no-subject sentences and run-on sentences,the methods like addition,omission,combination,division and structural adjustment are used.At the discourse level,the coherence and cohesion of the translation are ensured through connectives,addition,deletion and rewriting.This report shows that for the Tuina text,the translation based on the analysis of the text type is feasible.On the one hand,in the translation of Tuina terms,the translator can choose the methods according to the function and language features of the text,so as to ensure the accuracy of expression in the target language as much as possible;In the translation of sentences,as the informative text focuses on content rather than form,its content is usually constructed at the semantic level.The translator can fully convey the text content by supplementing sentence components,adjusting word order,explanation and so on.On the other hand,based on the text typology theory,the translator can evaluate and modify the translation more objectively in the process of re-translation and proofreading.