The Translation Unity of Chinese Medicine Terms in Two English Versions of Hong Lou Meng
Abstract
One of the important ways to explore the value of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is by reading Chinese classical literature. Taking David Hawkes’ and Yang Xianyi’s English translation versions of Hong Lou Meng as examples, this article makes a contrastive analysis between their TCM translations, including Chinese herbs and Chinese medicine terms. It shows that it is a great challenge to keep a balance between the precision of scientific and technical terminology and the culture embodied in literary works. Both of them rarely use transliteration, but prefer to translate in a popular and scientific style, etc. Their popularized translation can not only have a positive influence on enlightenment and reference to TCM translation now, but also help standardize TCM translation, and play a significant role in the global spread of TCM.
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