Principles And Methods Of Traditional Chinese Medicine Translation From The Perspectives Of Cultural Equivalence

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is an indispensable part of Chinese culture. With China's open policy, TCM is attracting more and more attention from the world. TCM translation significantly contributes to the integration of western scientific medicine and TCM; to the modernization of TCM and to the intercultural communication between Chinese and western culture. Difficulties in TCM translation are often seen in cultural and linguistic barriers as well as the differences between TCM and western medicine. Poor translations of TCM terms and classics are common in the present English literature of TCM. TCM translators must try to find a proper way.With reviewing the historic and present state of TCM translation, this thesis is intended to apply cultural equivalence from linguistic aspect in the translation of TCM. Through the study of some famous western scholars'attitude towards culture and cultural equivalence, faithfulness, which is advocated by Chinese scholars and has the same linguistic function as equivalence in certain extent, is discussed from the aspect of original meaning, author and form. By comparing translations of cultural factors in two English versions of The Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor from lexical level, syntactical level and rhetoric level, we should try our best to reflect the difference between the source language and the target language. In order to do so, we suggest using alienation translation and annotation in translate cultural elements in TCM. It is an admirable method to avoid misunderstanding and mistranslation of the source text, which often provides insight into the source culture. The limitations and flaws of cultural equivalence are also briefly discussed in this thesis.This thesis attempts to contribute to the application of cultural equivalence to TCM translation. We hope that our work will be helpful to assist the translators to adopt proper strategies in the process of TCM translation for better and more successful translations.