A Report On The Translation Of Twelve-lesson Beginner TCM From The Perspective Of Newmark's Semantic And Communicative Translation Theory

In the modern busy life,Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)has gradually become a popular topic in people's spare time,reflecting our great attention and pursuit towards health.The old TCM culture owns extensive and profound contents,and the text of ancient TCM books tends to be obscure and hard to be understood.Therefore,the TCM general-knowledge text with well-organized structure and clear concise words won a large popularity from readers.In this context,the translation of TCM general-knowledge text becomes very necessary to pass on knowledge of TCM theories and clinic to domestic and foreign readers who knew little about TCM before.On one hand,it can help readers grasp the most important,basic concepts,thoughts and theories in TCM;on the other hand,it can also enrich the study on TCM translation and teaching,inherit and spread TCM culture,promote cultural exchange between China and the West.Firstly,the book,Twelve-lesson Beginner TCM,which the author chose as translation text,is a representative TCM general-knowledge text with rich information and vivid,concise language.Under the guidance of Newmark's semantic and communicative translation theory and the help of text types' theory,the author has analyzed the features of the original text on its content and form.Twelve-lesson Beginner TCM is typical of rich TCM information,plain explanation and TCM specialty;it also adopts many parallel structures and analogies,introduces some writings in classical Chinese such as TCM medical cases and ancient Chinese prose.Thus,the original text owns both informative function and expressive function.According to Newmark's definition,semantic translation theory stresses that the translator should represent the accurate meaning and context of the original text under the allowance of the grammatical and syntactic rules of the target language.However,the communicative translation theory attaches more importance to the acceptance of the target readers and the effect of sending messages.The translator tends to integrate the original language culture into the target language culture,and has some freedom to modify the original text while respecting the original content.Therefore,the author mainly applied the semantic translation theory in the translation of TCM terminology,medical cases and ancient Chinese prose by the methods of literal translation plus annotation,respecting the original content and form,and keeping the original sentence structure.The author applied the communicative translation theory in the translation of parallel structures and analogies which are of less TCM information and practical value by the methods of reorganizing the sentence structure,using idiomatic expressions,adding or cutting information.In short,after the study on the translation practice,the author has perceived the necessity and value to explore the translation of TCM general-knowledge text.The translation study required to be carried out on the basis of analyzing the type of the original text,the purpose of translation and the type of readers.In addition,the limitations of semantic and communicative translation cannot be neglected,either.The two translation theories which shouldn't be isolated from each other can be used together or alternately in order to improve the overall quality of the target language text.