A C-E Translation Report On Health Management Of Traditional Chinese Medicine For The Elderly

As a language for special purpose,Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)English is originated in the 1980 s,so it is still a relatively young subject.TCM English is characterized by the features of medical English,namely monosemy,stability,strictness,and frequent use of nominalized structure,and also the TCM characters,that is,heavy use of culture-specific expressions and four-character structure.The Skopos theory is of unique advantage to guide TCM English translation by allowing rational selection of translation methods and techniques according to the intended use of the target text,so as to achieve the purpose of translation.The paper is an analysis of a Chinese-English translation task—Health Management of Traditional Chinese Medicine for the Elderly,commissioned by Translation Center of World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies,highlighting the problems and difficulties in the translation,and their corresponding translation strategies and solutions under the guidance of the Skopos theory.Based on the translation practice of the task,it is concluded that transliteration,transliteration plus annotation,word-for-word translation,borrowing are effective to translate TCM terms;the key to translating TCM four-character structure is to point out its internal relationship by adding conjunctions or prepositions;explanatory translation and free translation are feasible methods for the translation of classical medical Chinese;addition of a real or formal subject is useful to translate subjectless sentences;restructuring and division are solutions to handling long and complicated sentences.In general,the source text and the translation needs shall be taken into consideration by the translator to choose appropriate translation methods and techniques,so as to achieve the intended use of the target text.