English Translation Of Two-character Verb-object Action Terms Of Chinese Herbs From The Perspective Of Skopos Theory

Action terms of Chinese herbs are the pillar of science of Chinese herbal medicine.While the action terms used today are not standardized with problems as multiple connotation and repetition.The lack of standardization has retarded its study of English translation.As two-character verb-object terms are the basic unit of action terms,the study sorted out all the two-character verb-object action terms from the book of Chinese Material Medica(9th edition),which is the standardized teaching material of traditional Chinese medicine in general higher education of the 12 th five-year plan.Then the study gathered all the versions of English translation of action terms of Chinese herbs available home and abroad,and picked nine versions out of them on account of comprehensiveness and authority to make a list for cross-reference.The connotation of each term is determined based on etymology of Chinese characters,property and therapeutic actions of corresponding herbs.Then the study proposed recommended translations under the guidance of Skopos theory.Through the screening of Chinese Material Medica(6th edition),190 two-character verb-object action terms of Chinese herbs were sorted out and classified into 34 groups.Due to limited space,only four categories of action terms have been discussed in the text,the others are shown in attached list.The contrastive study under the guidance of skopos theory brought forth the following conclusions: Firstly,as action terms pertain to informative text,the connotation of action terms should be translated unequivocal;Secondly,as the systematicness is an inherent character of terms of science and technology,the terms implicating the same meaning should be translated identically;Thirdly,the translations should be as concise as possible to perform as particular culture codes in target language;Fourthly,the translations should be more relevant to the target language,because the readers are the ones that rate the translations.Fifthly;the main objective of translation of TCM terms is to publicize the culture of TCM,therefore cultural features of action terms should be transferred to target language.