Guest guest Posted October 26, 2004 Report Share Posted October 26, 2004 Hi Folks, All this argument over what terms are used in translating... Look, for 18 years I was a writer and editor in the computer technology field - I've spent years translating technobabble into understandable text; I know how it works. And there's a couple of points you're all missing. When a technical language develops in a field that's new, the words used to describe it are usually new words, that are backed up with relatively lengthy explanations in everyday language until the words get to be understood in the field and by new people entering the field (and often outside the field as well). A really long time ago, that was true in Western medicine - they made up words to fit the technical meanings as they were developed, and as doctors " moved out " of the Greek and Latin worlds into cultures that spoke other languages, they took their technical terms with them, and many of those terms either became familiar and were adopted in the daily language of the new culture, often with slightly new meanings, or simply were learned by new practitioners with the help of lengthy explanations in the culture's everyday language. English-speaking MDs use Greek and Latin technical terms even today; French-speaking MDs use Greek and Latin technical terms, even today; etc. The biggest reason so many people have problems with everyone's - anyone's - translations of technical Chinese medical terms into English is because however it's done, the translation uses everyday language and tries to make it into a technical term. This is problematic because everyone using English has an idea, whether it's more or less accurate is actually beside the point, about what that chosen word means, and the everyday understanding really doesn't ever mean what the translator fully intends it to mean when used as a technical term. We're doing it backwards, folks - usually technical terms move out of the specialized language and into the everyday language, but we're trying to take everyday language and make it into technical language, and it's just not going to work. It's very hard for someone who's a native speaker of a language to suspend what they know - or think they know - about the meaning of a word that's in common usage and give it a new meaning. This is made especially difficult when the translator chooses a word with a meaning similar to what he means but that meaning isn't the primary meaning - the one in common usage. How does a student or even a seasoned practitioner know when they're reading a word that's in common usage with an assigned technical meaning, or reading a word meant the way we commonly use it? They can't; and that's not going to change no matter how many dictionaries are available or not available, especially when even the seasoned readers-of-Chinese can't agree on a word in their own language that best describes the technical meaning. If the point of translating terms is to make TCM available to the West and make better TCM doctors out of Western practitioners and students, all this in-fighting about how educated one is and what the English words actually mean has to stop and we have to back up, swallow hard, and find a way to use the Pinyin term - initially with a lot of English words to explain what is technically meant. It's really the only efficient solution, difficult as it may be, to make sure that everyone knows when we're using a word with a technical meaning, and to get everyone to understand that the word includes or implies depths of meaning and what those meanings are. There is simply not enough time in the day to look up every suspect word in an English dictionary and/or the Wiseman or whoever else's dictionary when there is so much to be learned in Chinese medicine; and let me note that the looking-up won't be one-time, because any English speaker who is unfamiliar with the TCM technical meaning of a term like " depurative, " for example, or " vacuous, " or " effuse, " or whatever term, is going to make an assumption, based on their understanding of either common usage or common usage of a root of those words, about what the term means. And they'll be wrong. And it will take endless repetition for the average person to unschool themselves about their wrong interpretation and reschool themselves more correctly. It will take much less time for the same person to learn the technical meaning of a word they are completely unfamiliar with and can't make assumptions about because it isn't in their everyday language - because it's in Pinyin; and they'll always understand the meaning better. That's the reality of making technical language comprehensible, in the real world, to real people, to new doctors of TCM, to old doctors of TCM wanting to gain a deeper understanding of their art. Every other consideration is truly unimportant. If you aren't understood by the people you're writing for, it really doesn't matter how correct you might be from a linguistic or theoretical point of view. If I can't read a translated text and understand what it says, it isn't useful to me. And if I read it and because of the word choices misunderstand what it says, it's dangerous, in this field. So my suggestion to you all is to thank those folks who have spent so much of their time learning Chinese, understanding this technical language, and trying to translate it into English, and ask them to put their efforts into the relatively lengthy explanations we all need and not into choosing English words to imply their meaning. Use the Pinyin, find a way to make that work, and then teach us what we need to know about the term. ---Deb Marshall Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 26, 2004 Report Share Posted October 26, 2004 , " Deb Marshall " <taichideb@t...> wrote: Use the Pinyin, find a way to make that work, and then teach us what we need to know about the term. > > ---Deb Marshall Deb thanks for your well informed comments on the direction of language (technical into lay, not vice-versa). However we have discussed pinyin as an option on this list before and it is considered unworkable by all translators. I am not sure if you read chinese, so I do not mean to patronize. But there are far more characters in chinese than there are pinyin with tones. In other words, the same pinyin with the same tone can refer to several or many characters. If you have a workaround for this, I would love to hear it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 27, 2004 Report Share Posted October 27, 2004 If you aren't understood by the people you're writing for, it really doesn't matter how correct you might be from a linguistic or theoretical point of view. If I can't read a translated text and understand what it says, it isn't useful to me. And if I read it and because of the word choices misunderstand what it says, it's dangerous, in this field. >>>>At the same time do people think guohui liu warm diseases is less understandable than Mitchell's shang han lun? Is it inferior in depth? is it inferior in its clinical utility especially for the busy practitioner which is a different market than TCM collage student? etc. Alon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 27, 2004 Report Share Posted October 27, 2004 Deb, You make some good points, and I agree with your reading of the problem being debated. But your suggestion that we should simply use Pinyin just doesn't work. 1. There are way too many technical terms in Chinese medicine. 2. There are way too many homonyms within the Chinese language even if we put tone marks above each Pinyin word. Bob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted October 27, 2004 Report Share Posted October 27, 2004 > > alon marcus [alonmarcus] > Wednesday, October 27, 2004 10:02 AM > > Re: Re: Bensky vs Chen & Chen > > > If you aren't understood by the people you're writing for, it really > doesn't matter how correct you might be from a linguistic or theoretical > point of view. If I can't read a translated text and understand what it > says, it isn't useful to me. And if I read it and because of the word > choices misunderstand what it says, it's dangerous, in this field. > >>>>At the same time do people think guohui liu warm diseases is less > understandable than Mitchell's shang han lun? Is it inferior in depth? is > it inferior in its clinical utility especially for the busy practitioner > which is a different market than TCM collage student? etc. > Alon [Jason] I personally find the warm disease incredible readable, very clear, and very clinically useful... But that is just me... Great example... - Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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