中醫英譯與詞彙學之研究

English Translation and Terminology of Chinese Medicine

雖然中醫的外文翻譯常被認為是很困難的，但是有關的問題卻很少進行公開討論，錯誤或不理想的中醫翻譯多半歸咎於譯者不遵從恪守中醫精神去擇選譯名的原則，而不是因為中西傳譯本身的問題。本文就翻譯中醫解剖、生理、病理、藥理學等領域時所可能面臨的具體問題進行探討，並試圖證明，不忠實於原義的中醫翻譯多半肇因於未經細審而以西醫術語直接譯解的謬誤或是以冗長釋義取代簡便的主譯名稱，造成某些中醫特殊理念的扭曲，甚至漏失了重要且微妙的區分性概念。中醫翻譯的困難是能夠以簡明的翻譯原則加以克服的，只要擇取的外語名稱與原文名稱意義等同，不存有任何違背或刑減中醫概念的涵義而且在任何上下文可以方便使用即可。本論文提出豐富的例材以說明之。

Chinese medicine is generally recognized to present considiberable translation problems, which are rarely discussed openly. However, much mistranslation is due not so much to the impossibility of rendering Chinese languages as to the failure to apply rigorous term selection procedures. The present paper looks at a broad range of specific translation problems in the fields of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacy, and shows that the unfaithful translation of Chinese medicine is due to the tendency to render Chinese medical concepts with ready-made Western medical terms whose definitions do not correspond to the original terms, to translate inconsistently and contextually and resorting to paraphrase instead of establishing fixed labels for definable concepts. As a result, many original notions (even basic ones such as qi) have be twisted in translation, and many of the finer conceptual distinctions have been obscured. These infelicities can however be overcome by a simple translation methodology that stipulates that as far as possible a single concept should be translated consistently by a single term that is equivalent in meaning, that implies no notions alien to the discipline, and that can be used conveniently in all contexts.