1. Common word formation in EST.
In the word formation of EST, compound method, affix method, abbreviation method and abbreviation method are widely used, which is of reference significance to the translation of TCM terms.
Terms such as 1 and compound method occupy a large proportion in the translation of TCM terms, and their meanings are mostly the superposition of various words. The advantages of this translation method are easy to find the corresponding words, clear structure and easy to understand. The disadvantage is that translation is often not concise enough.
2. The meaning of affixation is the sum of affixes and stem meanings, which is characterized by conciseness, strong professionalism, strong comparability with western medicine terms and convenient academic exchange. However, in the current translation of TCM terms, the proportion of such words is not high, such as acupuncture.
3. Abbreviation usually means the sum of the two meanings of a word, and its characteristics are similar to affixation. Such as acupressure.
4. Abbreviations are widely used in scientific English (including medical English), but they are rarely used in TCM English. At present, only the word "Chinese medicine" is generally accepted. Of course, some scholars have made useful attempts in this regard, such as shortening the epidemic febrile disease to. Abbreviations are a very convenient way of word formation, which can improve the information content of unit vocabulary. However, how to use this method to make TCM terms tend to be concise and standardized needs further study.
Second, other translation methods.
1, Part-of-speech transformation Due to the differences in structure and expression between Chinese and English, the structure of TCM terms should be transformed in translation. The common method is to convert the subject-predicate structure and verb-object structure in Chinese into noun phrases or unqualified verb phrases in English. Like pain relief. Similar methods are often used to describe symptoms. Because symptoms represent a state rather than a specific action, they can be described by phrases such as subject-predicate or verb-object in Chinese, while nouns (phrases) or gerunds (phrases) are commonly used in English. Like night sweats.
2. Structural Adjustment Most of the TCM terms were formed in ancient China, so the language form retains the characteristics of ancient Chinese and pays attention to neatness. However, when translating into English, it is often necessary to adjust this structure and adopt a structure that conforms to the language habits of the target language in order to achieve loyalty in the sense. Such as mental fatigue, limb weakness, palpitation, etc.
3. Transliteration method Because of the great differences between eastern and western cultures and Chinese and western medical theories, it is difficult to find the corresponding words in western medicine (English) for many TCM terms, and the free translation method is too lengthy to meet the requirements of concise terms. In this case, transliteration is a desirable choice and can be marked when necessary to make up for the shortage of transliteration. Such as qi, qigong, yin and yang. Qi is an important concept in the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, which can refer to both living matter and physiological function of human body. Transliteration reflects the true meaning of "Qi" most directly and concisely.
Basically, medical workers can translate medical terms from the above two methods. Of course, we should also pay attention to the actual contextual requirements in the translation process. Finally, I hope these two translation methods can help you.