Exploration In The English Translation Of Terms Of TCM Basic Theory With "Xin-Da-Ya"

Traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)is speeding up internationalization development on account of its increasingly significant positive influence,and its English standard terminologies becomes more urgent and necessary.At present,it has some achievements for the term standardization,but there are still some nonstandard and non-uniform English versions of terms,especially terms of TCM basic theory.To solve that problem,depending on literature analysis,this study intends to describe the process and results of deciding on proper English versions of terms of TCM basic theory,with the translation principle “Xin-Da-Ya”.It includes four chapters:In chapter one,the author carried out a literature review on two topics.Topic one is about the English translation of terms of TCM basic theory,mainly at home.The main content of relevant studies can be divided into three sections: standardization,translation methods,strategies and principles,and corpora creation.Topic two is about English translation of TCM under “Xin-Da-Ya”,almost in China.With“Xin-Da”,relevant studies are conducted based on lexical connotation of TCM vocabularies.But shortcomings in the studies are obvious.Specifically,the concept of some terms was not described clearly and concisely,and the way to find proper English names of TCM terms is single(only by comparing the connotation of these terms and their English names).To address these shortcomings,the study gives a solution,and it is the first time to study for English translation of terms of TCM basic theory.In the study,connotation of the terms is described precisely with dictionary,Canons and standard of TCM.At the same time,with “Da”,it is the first time that Corpus of Contemporary American English(COCA),Wikipedia and Web of Science are used to analyze proper English versions of the terms,and “Ya” is considered for English translation of the terms,with Etymology Online.In chapter two,“Xin-Da-Ya” is described from its history and meaning,to show its solid research basis and practical use,as theoretical support for this study.Firstly,the author gives a brief introduction of the history of the principle,and explain its trait of connotation changes with the times.Secondly,in order to make the definition clear,the author collected data on different views,and the data results show that the definition of “Xin-Da-Ya” today is tending towards being clear-“Xin” refers to faithfulness,“Da” to expressiveness,and “Ya” to elegance.This meets the requirement of the times.In chapter three,define the scope of terms of TCM basic theory and describe the connotation of the selected terms.Meanwhile,decide on proper English versions of the selected terms,with “Xin-Da-Ya”.The study is conducted in four steps.Step one,the terms are selected from GB/T 20348-2006 Basic theory nomenclature of traditional Chinese medicine.And then the definition of these terms is interpreted,referring to Dictionary of Traditional Chinese Medicine(2nd Edition),Huangdi Neijing,Jin Kuang Essentials and so on.The fact is that the description of the selected terms in the standard is basically correct and concise.Step two,Different English versions of selected terms in three Chinese-English standards and two Chinese-English dictionaries,are listed.Step three,taking “Xin-Da-Ya” as the criterion to decide on proper English versions of the terms,with three English dictionaries(online version),COCA,Wikipedia and Etymology Online.Step four,these proper English versions are sorted and presented in table form.In chapter four,it includes three parts.Part one is the conclusion that there is a rule of deciding on proper English names of terms of TCM basic theory with“Xin-Da-Ya” — most terms meet the requirement of “Xin”,followed by “Xin-Da”,then “Xin-Da-Ya”.Part two is to reveal the shortcomings in this study from two aspects:study content and study scope.Part three shows two problems in the process of English standard terminologies on TCM—ways to define the scope of terms of TCM basic theory is different,and there are certain flaws in translation when translators playing the role of subjects.In virtue of the content of four parts,it is the conclusion that according to correspondence to its connotation,multiple English versions of terms of TCM basic theory can be considered as its standard English translation,sorted in a certain order.What’s more,the rule of English translation of TCM terms under “Xin-Da-Ya” exists,which make contributions to the English standard terminologies on TCM.