An Interpreting Project Report On Traditional Chinese Medical Course For Foreign Students At Nanjing University Of Traditional Chinese Medicine

As what has been observed as part of the change in people’s concept of health and medical models as well, the ideas entailed in TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) like the holistic mode of thinking and treatment based on the syndrome and preventive treatment of disease are being warmly received by the international community, and also begin to arouse wide attention in other fields. The reporter undertook an interpreting project on the TCM course at Nanjing University of Traditional Medicine, working as both an escort and classroom interpreter between August and November,2015, for foreign students who came to learn traditional Chinese medicine. Major barriers in the interpreting process fell into three categories:profession-related problems (ignorance of medical knowledge, difficulties with medical terms, and so on), unfamiliarity with Chinese health preserving culture, slow response to unexpected situations resulting from lack of interpreting experience, and other general problems with translation skills. Based on an analysis of real-life data, the reporter achieved three solutions to the difficulties, namely accumulating medical knowledge and building a bilingual corpus, making flexible use of knowledge about Chinese health preserving culture, and drawing upon successful cases from experienced interpreters. Meanwhile, the reporter sketched the history and development of TCM. Besides exploring medical interpreting, the reporter states that focusing on culture export during the TCM clinic interpreting not only conveys knowledge to foreign students but also dispels the misunderstanding about TCM outside China and accordingly promotes the development of TCM.