On The English Translation Of Traditional Chinese Medical Terminology From The Perspective Of Contextual Adaptation

Traditional Chinese Medicine is a brilliant crystallization of Chinese five thousand years culture, which is an indispensable part of Chinese traditional culture resource. It is a complete scientific system established gradually in the course of medical practice by ancestors and their tenacious struggle with the disease for thousands of years. It has already caused people’s attention all around the world, attributed to two primary advantages-significant effect and less side effect. TCM has already been introduced to foreign countries as early as one thousand years ago. The world-wide spread of TCM has become an inevitable trend along with the flourishing development of modern medicine. Moreover, the World Health Organization (WHO) promotes it to the places in all over the world as effective medical experience. Since the21st century, the "heat" of TCM continues its high temperature which makes it imperative to standardize and unify the translation of TCM. Among them, the translation of TCM terminology is one of the most essential issues of TCM translation. These basic vocabulary is often with distinct meaning, including a series of Chinese traditional philosophy and religious features such as Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism, etc.. As a consequence, it is nearly impossible to find the corresponding words in western languages. As a result, the translation of TCM terminology is particularly important. So far, by lots of academic research, the scholars found that many TCM terminologies come from the ancient Chinese medical masterpiece Huang Di Nei Jing, which is an encyclopedic medical masterpiece and has a far-reaching influence on the Chinese traditional culture and the world civilization, involving multidisciplinary categories such as astronomy, medicine, philosophy, sociology, geography and so on. Owing to its widespread use in different academic fields and the high value of research and development, a large number of TCM scholars and translation enthusiasts stirred up the translation boom of Huang Di Nei Jing, and a new trend of studying the translation of Huang Di Nei Jing from multiple perspectives is emerging. However, most scholars are trying to study the translation strategies from the basic points of translation theory, they are unable to put the translation work into a dynamic process.This thesis takes Adaptation Theory as theoretical analysis principles, and chooses Li Zhaoguo’s English version of Huang Di Nei Jing as the study carrier; Li Zhaoguo’s English version of Huang Di Nei Jing is a famous TCM reference book both at home and abroad. Focusing on the analysis of strategies and methods of TCM terminology translation in this book, it explains that the English translation of TCM terminology in Huang Di Nei Jing is a process of constant selection and dynamic adaptation, and provides a desirable theoretical reference for the selection of translation strategies and methods of TCM terminology; it aims to meet the furthest requirement of Contextual Adaptation Theory and the linguistic structure of target language in the process of TCM translation, and provides a brand-new perspective for language communication on both sides.This thesis starts from the perspective of Adaptation theory, analyzes the translation strategies, methods and principles of TCM terminology in Li Zhaoguo’s English version. The findings show that contextual adaptation makes the course of the English translation reasonable and well-documented, and the result may provide some reference for readers and translators of TCM.