The Challenges of Translating CCM
Note: This is the second installment in a series of posts that aim to offer interested readers a glance behind the proverbial curtain in my work as a professional translator of historical Chinese medical literature. Post 1 on “Why I translate the Chinese medicine classics” can be found BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK.
Let’s start with the linguistic issues, in the narrowest sense of that word. As anybody who has ever worked with a classical Chinese text learns right away, classical Chinese operates very differently grammatically than modern English, or really any other modern language. So I am constantly forced, in the process of translation, to add information that is left unsaid in the original source, like the subject or object, or the tense or active or passive voice of the verb. In certain aspects, however, classical Chinese is actually MORE specific, such as with its ability to emphasize the topic of a sentence by placing it in a prominent position in the sentence. Replicating that structure can make for awkward English, such as the standard “translation” of a topic-comment sentence as “As for [TOPIC], it is a case of [COMMENT],” usually expressed in Chinese as “[TOPIC] 者 [COMMENT] 也. I do push back against the popular claim that classical Chinese is more vague than modern languages. More often than not, in my experience, the choice of a classical author to leave out a part of the sentence that has to be spelled out in English such as the subject or object, to cite just one example, is based on two reasons: Either this information was obvious to the ancient reader (but may or may not be to us modern readers), or the lack of specificity is intentional. The more skill I develop in classical Chinese, the clearer it becomes. Far too often, what inexperienced translators or readers see as vagueness and therefore gloss over or interpret too freely is due to a lack of linguistic or cultural knowledge and experience. It is my goal as a teacher of classical Chinese to make my students aware of this issue so that they begin to cultivate an attitude of humility and respect. As a result, they will approach a text or passage with the basic assumption that if they are not clear on its meaning, it is not the author’s fault or sloppiness but either intentional (in which case they should replicate it) or due to their lack of skill as a translator. This is probably the single most important message I want to convey to my students.
Next, of course there is the issue with technical terminology, which tends to offer us three choices: Do I equate a classical disease name, like 霍亂 huoluan for example, with a modern biomedical term (“cholera” is the standard TCM translation)? Do I leave it in Pinyin as huoluan because there simply is no modern equivalent? Or do I translate it literally as “fulminant turmoil”? Also, there are certain loaded characters whose meaning has changed or expanded from one century or writer or genre to the next. Probably the most commonly cited example of this issue from philosophical literature that is simply impossible to translate with a single term is 理 li. For a medical example, consider 腳氣 jiaoqi, literally “foot Qi”: Originally referring to a disease that affected wealthy northerners in the swampy south, related to dampness and wind in the environment and associated with weakness and swelling in the feet, it came to be associated with digestive problems and nutritional deficiency, and is therefore often translated as “beriberi.” In modern Chinese, however, it is additionally used to refer to the fungal infection that we call “athlete’s foot” in English! So it can be quite challenging to decide which English word to translate it with when none of these artificial categories fit comfortably. The choice on whether to leave it in Pinyin or translate it into technical medical language or more commonly used ordinary English really depends on each translation project and the intended audience for that.
Last but not least, once contemporary translators have mastered the basics of classical Chinese grammar and the skill of consulting online dictionaries to explore the many semantic dimensions of a character over the centuries and across genres, perhaps the biggest stumbling block is the knowledge of the rhetorical and cultural context of a text. And while AI can make a huge difference in identifying and explaining cultural references or quotations, I am not sure there is a technological shortcut. This is one area where the traditional training of a rigorous university PhD program in sinology really continues to shine. And it is also the kind of knowledge that is very hard for an individual to recognize when they lack it! How do you know what you don’t know? How can we teach ourselves to avoid reading our own modern biases and worldview into an ancient text when we live in our modern minds? It can be as innocuous as me carelessly translating a statement about blood flow as “circulation,” perhaps because it sounds more elegant in English. A reader may later pick up my translation and use it as evidence that the circulation of blood was already a given fact in Warring States medical texts. This reminds me of the telephone game, where a message gets whispered from one person to the next and becomes unrecognizable to the original author by the time it has passed through enough people, each of whom have subtly and unintentionally altered it just a hair. Not such a big deal in a children’s game, but when it comes to a medical text that is taken literally as a guide to treatment by contemporary practitioners???
For this reason, I take my job as a literal translator very seriously and try as hard as I can to convey the message of the original source text without introducing my own interpretation. To me, my personal opinion of what a passage means can come in a discussion or footnote. But of course that depends on the intention of any translation project and the patience and interest of the audience.
If this post has awakened your curiosity about learning to read the classical Chinese texts yourself, I am starting a new cohort in my 2-year “Triple Crown” training program with the first level, “Foundations” beginning on September 11, 2025.
