On Application Of The Theory Of The Point Of View In Discourse To Translation Of Chinese Medicine Instructions

Point of view is the position from which anything is viewed or seen, or from which a picture is taken; also, the position or aspect in which anything is seen or regarded. Over the past two decades, point of view has aroused broad attention in the circle of linguistics. Linguist van Dijk (1981:157) believed that point of view is one of concepts of pragmatics, involving semantics and pragmatics of text. Roger Fowler (1986:9) further pointed out that point of view should be one of criteria of linguistics if linguistics is studied from sentences to text. At present domestic scholars also begin to pay attention to this area. Xiong Muqing, summarizing van Dijk and Roger Flower's elaborations and discussion, put forward the framework of the theory of the point of view in discourse. And he (2001) categorized the point of view in discourse into four types: (1) spatio-temporal point of view; (2) ideological point of view; (3) narrative point of view; (4) perceptual point of view.Due to lack of translation standard, current translation of Chinese medicine instructions (CMI) is often in a chaotic situation. Partly because of it, current CMI translation fails to attract foreign consumers and enter the international market smoothly. From the perspective of the point of view in discourse, many CMI translation texts are regarded as lack of common standard, readability, faithfulness and professional traits as well. This paper, based on the framework of the theory of the point of view in discourse, discusses the problems in CMI translation, tries to explain how the theory of the point of view in discourse affects and guides CMI translation, and aims at improving the quality of CMI translation.The author of this paper made a series of empirical studies through the ways of face-to-face interview and questionnaire to answer two questions (1) what are the problems in CMI translation? (2) Are there any fixed patterns for CMI translation? The subjects in the study are 30 foreigners living in Nanning, Guangxi, who come from different countries and regions, including Asia, Europe, and Africa. All subjects, who have some understanding of Chinese culture and can speak fluent or semi-fluent English, are regarded as representatives of most Chinese medicine consumers abroad. Although current CMI translation is generally accepted by most subjects, they complained the mistakes in grammar, sentence/ text structure as well as culture transference in translated CMI samples shown to them. Based on the above discussion, the paper, mainly from the perspectives of narrative POV, ideological POV and perceptual POV, puts forward three principles for CMI translation: (1) updating CMI translation; (2) reflecting culture in CMI translation; (3) making CMI translation attractive. The results of the research prove four hypotheses in this thesis: 1) Current CMI translation fails in many ways to attract foreign consumers' attention; (2) Current CMI translation cannot meet the demands of pharmaceutical manufacturers; (3) The general CMI translation needs to be updated; (4) There cannot be fixed patterns for CMI translation, but effective ones exist and should be well applied.