when is terminology important

[Guest guest]

Just to be clear, as I have written many times, I think issues of terminology

only rarely, if

ever, impact one clinical choices and clinical performance. So clinicians don't

overly

concern yourselves with all this. I think the same is true with regards to

whether one is

able to read chinese or not. There are now enough good sources in English using

various

schemes of translation that are considered to be reliable source of clinical

reference by the

bulk of the px community. And be very clear, no study of validity would ever be

considered accurate without considering those who are not academics. In the

field of

instructional design, it is considered standard to consider the opinions of

academic

scholars who don't teach, former px who do teach and current teachers.

 

When developing instruction in a practical field, one does not always defer to

the subject

matter experts in the final analysis. Even medical doctors with their highly

technical

jargon tend to talk in nonstandard terms amongst themselves in clinic and even

continuing education. Most say cold, not rhinovirus, for example. But this

does not lower

their expectation that works of scholarship and research will be written using a

common

standard terminology for which there are never questions about what is being

discussed.

These are two separate issues. Denotative or standardized terminologies prevent

confusion and facilitate organization and searching. That's about all. And

also denotative

translation terminologies aren't meant to connote anything at all.

 

So for those who are still hung up on the straw man complaint of a given chinese

character

having different connotations in different contexts, you also are completely

missing the

point. In chinese, it is the same character with different connotations. In

Wiseman

terminology, it is the same denotative term with different connotations. Those

of you who

don't get this just assume (for no valid reason, I might add) technical

translation terms are

supposed to have transparent connotations. I think this argument really fall

apart when

one looks in the opposite direction. Just as we debate translating ancient

terms into

modern English, the Chinese had to consider how to translate many scientific

terms in

their own language without adding thousands of new characters or the chaos of

using

different characters in different contexts in an attempt to define each term

every time one

uses it (which would have been incredibly inefficient). If you are familiar

with the way

chinese added scientific jargon to their language, it was by combining existing

characters

used in common speech and arbitrarily assigning them precise equivalents in

western

science. To a layperson, these terms are incomprehensible. One needs to learn

their

technical definitions. However if you looked at the terms, you might THINK you

understood them if you made the mistake of thinking they were connotative rather

than

denotative.

 

For example, in chinese in WM, the term xiao ke means diabetes. It has nothing

to do with

wasting or thirsting, per se. Both of these signs are in fact quite rare in

type 2 diabetes.

The term was used historically to describe some disease that resembled diabetes

and

perhaps type 1. But the modern usage in chinese WM is a label for hyperglycemia

due to

insulin resistance or pancreatic damage. It may include the symptoms of wasting

and

thirsting in rare untreated cases of type 1, but no Chinese WM doc considers

this to be the

primary issue. Those are just symptoms. If I chose to translate xiao ke as

waste and thirst

when it appeared in a western medical text when what was meant was the modern

label of

diabetes and all that implied, I would have made a grave error. Similarly in

TCM, when

reviewing research or scholarship, one needs accuracy above all else. The

burden of

connotation in a technical field, if indeed any is truly relevant, is most

certainly upon the

reader. Once you read the standard technical term, you can then identify the

source

character, which will allow you to explore all its connotations throughout all

of chinese

history as you see fit and then do as you please with that data. For a given

translator to

merely give you his connotation and no glossary to explore further is be at the

mercy of

that translator. There is no freedom to construct one's own understanding at

all in that

scenario nor does it respect any established consensus within chinese medical

history vis a

vis the issue of terms, standards and dictionaries.