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| Comments on Nigel Wiseman’sA Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine (II) —On the use of Western medical terms to express the concepts of traditional Chinese medicine |
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| KeyWord:Nigel Wiseman A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine English terminology of Chinese medicine Western medical term |
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| Abstract: |
| Mr. Wiseman believes that Western medical terms chosen as equivalents of Chinese medical terms should be the words known to all speakers and not requiring any specialist knowledge or instrumentation to understand or identify, and strictly technical Western medical terms should be avoided regardless of their conceptual conformity to the Chinese terms. Accordingly, many inappropriate Western medical terms are selected as English equivalents by the authors of the Dictionary, and on the other hand, many ready-made appropriate Western medical terms are replaced by loan English terms with the Chinese style of word formation. The experience gained in solving the problems of translating Western medical terms into Chinese when Western medicine was first introduced to China is helpful for translating Chinese medical terms into English. However, the authors of the Dictionary adhere to their own opinions, ignoring others’ experience. The English terms thus created do not reflect the genuine meaning of the Chinese terms, but make the English glossary in chaos. The so-called true face of traditional Chinese revealed by such terms is merely the Chinese custom of word formation and metaphoric rhetoric. In other words, traditional Chinese medicine is not regarded as a system of medicine but merely some Oriental folklore. The paper was written on the basis of an e-mailing discussion with the participation of FANG Ting-yu (Beijing Traditional Chinese Medical University), LIU Gan-zhong (Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital), LU Wei-bo (China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine). WANG Kui (World Association of Traditional Chinese Medical Societies), WANG Tai (Medical College, Qinghai University), and ZHANG Qing-rong (Liaoning Traditional Chinese Medical College) |
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