Abstract:

As a fundamental issue in translation study, translation unit (TU) has been analyzed at the levels of text, clause, phrase and term by numerous researchers. However, TU of terminology, especially of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) terminology, is a field that lacks specific researches. Different from common technology and scientific terminology, TCM terms are featured by ambiguity, polysemy and uncertainty of meaning. In practice, most translators take the original Chinese TCM terms as the default TU. Nigel Wiseman uses Chinese character as the basic unit of TCM translation while Yang Mingshan advocates that TU of TCM terms should be analyzed at the level of character combination. Based on clarification of concepts and characteristics of TCM terminology, and after reviewing research status and analyzing examples, we propose that meaning unit of TCM is the TU of TCM terms, which should be the smallest semantic collocation structure. We also suggest that empirical study of TCM translation unit should be considered in the future.

Key words: translation unit, traditional Chinese medicine terminology, semantic collocational structure