English Names Of Chinese Medicine Classical Literature Research

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Classics are the early documents that not only constitute the foundation of TCM, but also provide an access to TCM for people across the globe. As the windows and souls of the entire works, the titles of TCM Classics reflect the writing style, the writing purpose, the genre or the content of the writings. They even give information of the author’s thoughts and emotions, and thus are the essence of authors’ creation. Titles leave the first impression on readers. As a result, an appropriate English title will effectively motivate the readers’reading interest and remove the reading obstacle so as to provide convenience for far-sighted western personages to devote themselves to the TCM career. Thereby, it has positive impacts on the smooth transmission and sustainable development of the TCM worldwide.Although the title is the first thing for readers to acquaint a book, it is not the first step for translators to take when translating a book. The English translation of a book’s title is usually the result of elaborative consideration and profound understanding of the book, repeated deliberation as well as the author’s background. Unfortunately, there are few studies about the English translation of TCM book titles. Systematic study is rare in the area of TCM Classics title translation. Hence, it presents a wide research space.A total of97titles of the TCM Classics were included in this research since they were listed as items1-97of the Part02.01in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy (2004) published by China National Committee for Terms in Science and Technologies. Their English versions in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy (2004), International Standard Chinese-English Basic Nomenclature of Chinese Medicine, and WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region were referred to for comparison. In this thesis, TCM Classic titles were classified into different groups according to their shared characteristics, and rules and strategies for Chinese-English translation were explored. Furthermore, suggested translation for71book titles which involving key elements was provided. And the problems discovered during the study process were also discussed.This paper proposes that it should be vital to disclose the essence within the title when translating numbers. In terms of translating names of a certain person or a certain group of people, the existing principles should be obeyed faithfully, and the careless conjecture must be avoided. In case of region names, the translation needs to highlight the specific place and avoid confusion. As for the reduplicated word in a title, a good mastery of the grammar structure is required before flexible translation. For the most frequently used words like "Lun (Treatise), Fang (Formulas), Bencao (Materia Medica), Lu (Records), Ji (Collection), An (Medical Records), Jing (Classic)" and etc., the translator should give sufficient consideration to their universality, and control the "limitation" objectively and justly. The translator should work hard to proceed with adequate study on every element and translate based on the information revealed by the titles. As for the word(s) which expresses Chinese culture and religions such as Confucianism, the translator should trace back the cultural origin and endeavor to provide equivalent translation.In sum, translation strategies for TCM Classics titles have been explored in accordance with classifications from the element perspective. It is anticipated that the results of this study can provide references to the English translation research of TCM terminology, enlighten more congeneric study and serve for the standardization of TCM terminology.