Translating Traditional Chinese Medicine Terminology

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) features its remarkable theoretical system andunprecedented treatment mechanism. As the basis of TCM, TCM terms belong to thecultural-specific words, which take on the strong marks of such ancient Chinese culturalfactors as Confucianism，Taoism and Buddhism. Hence, TCM terminology translation plays avery critical role in spreading TCM and Chinese traditional culture toward the whole world.Despite great efforts in TCM translation and research, there are still many obstacles laid aheadfor researchers and practioners in this field due to great cultural barriers.By describing the phenomenon of cultural vacancy in translation, the present studymakes a comprehensive analysis on the translation problems of TCM terms and explores thecompensation strategies with special reference to two English versions of Huangdi Neijing.The study, after defining and classifying TCM terminology and analyzing its features, movesto locate the three major translation problems caused by cultural vacancy: inaccuracy ormisreading of TCM terms, loss of cultural image of TCM terms and unstandardization ofTCM terms. In view of these problems, the study explores three compensating translationstrategies with reference to two English versions of Huangdi Neijing, i. e. the source-cultureoriented strategy, the target-culture oriented strategy and the cultural integration strategy. Thesource-culture oriented strategy, which mainly comprises the translation methods oftransliteration with annotation, paraphrase with annotation, literal translation with annotationand literal translation, is employed to retain the cultural flavor of TCM by annotations aboutChinese medicine and Chinese culture or by literal translation and transliteration. Thetarget-culture oriented strategy, which mainly include the translation methods ofnaturalization and omission, confroms to the English cultural and linguistic norms withoutchanging the main cultural message of the original TCM terms. And the cultural integrationstrategy, which mainly covers the translation methods of integration and contextualapplication, is used to integrate traditional Chinese culture with western culture subtly.It is concluded that it is highly advisable for translators to employ appropriatecompensating translation strategies in TCM terminology translation as cultural vacancy is prevailing in the translation process due to great cultural differences between Chinese cultureand Western culture. These compensating strateties are helpful to enhance the accuracy ofTCM terninology tranlation and boost the acceptability of TCM terms in the West.Accordingly, the study is of great significance to the translation practice of TCM and to thespread of traditional Chinese medicine culture.