Abstract：Objective To compare the application of two mainstream English translation standards of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) terminologies in published research papers: International Standard Chinese-English Basic Nomenclature of Chinese Medicine (ISNTCM) by World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies and WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region(ISTTM) by World Health Organization. Methods Terminologies from the two standards were collected and processed into Excel and Txt files to count their numbers of words and phrases. A total of 202 papers on TCM published by English edition of Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine and American Journal of Chinese Medicine from its inception to September 2019 were collected, and a small TCM English corpus was built. The word frequency of two standard phrases and words in the corpus were retrieved. Results The shared words in the two major standards were more than their unique words, indicating that their core morphemes were basically the same, but due to the difference in collocations, there were more unique phrases than the common ones in the two standards. Besides, it was shown that for the terminologies corresponding to the same Chinese meaning, the word frequency of ISNTCM was generally higher than that of ISTTM, indicating that ISNTCM was more popular than ISTTM in published TCM research papers. Conclusion English translation standard of TCM terminology should not only conform to the rules of TCM, linguistics and other disciplines, but also follow the principle of “conventional practice”. Sampling the practical use of existing standards using corpus technology provides empirical evidence support for the related theoretical researches and functions as an effective way to resolve theoretical disputes. Besides, this study also shows that corpus technology might be applied to compile the English dictionary or to establish the English standard for TCM terminologies.
张喆 徐丽 闵玲 姚秋慧 张玥. 基于中医英语语料库的中医术语英译标准研究[J]. 中国医药导报, 2022, 19(20): 189-193.
ZHANG Zhe XU Li MIN Ling YAO Qiuhui ZHANG Yue. Research on English translation standards of traditional Chinese medicine terms based on traditional Chinese medicine English corpus. 中国医药导报, 2022, 19(20): 189-193.
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