On July 21, 2021, Prof. Wei Xiangqing, Professor of the English Department at Nanjing University’s School of Foreign Languages, gave a lecture entitled “Translator’s Practice Guidelines in the Translation of Chinese Traditional Cultural Terms” to CFLC faculty and students. Prof. Wei elaborated on the guidelines for the translation of cultural terms from multiple perspectives, including terminology, translation and cross-cultural knowledge transmission. He emphasized the importance of the awareness of the guidelines for the translation of cultural terms, illustrating his point with specific examples.
At the beginning of the lecture, Prof. Wei analyzed the key words of this lecture. He pointed out that “terminology translation” is not only the act of translating terms, but also involves the process of cross-language conversion, concept transplantation and cultural transmission of terms. He stated that traditional Chinese culture, as the premise and foundation of Chinese people’s cultural identity, holds such important attributes as ethnicity, historicity and humanity.
According to Prof. Wei, the global dissemination of terms in traditional Chinese culture began with translation of Chinese texts by Western missionaries; however, there are many limitations in the cross-lingual dissemination of Chinese culture from this “others-shaping” perspective, especially in the translation of terms in traditional Chinese culture, which are often mistranslated or even misinterpreted to varying degrees. This has a negative impact on the acceptance and identification of “Chinese knowledge”. To address this issue, which is both historical and practical, it is necessary to disseminate Chinese discourse internationally by the Chinese, and the issue of “standardization” of the translation of terms in traditional Chinese traditional culture is a top priority.
Since terms circulate in knowledge spaces at different levels, such as normative knowledge space, professional knowledge space and popular knowledge space, it is difficult to standardize terminology. Taking the different Chinese translations of the medical terms Alzheimer and ECMO in the above three knowledge spaces as examples, Prof. Wei further analyzed the cognitive hierarchy of the communicative context in which the terms are translated. He emphasized the difficulty of standardizing terminology translation practices, an issue that calls for greater attention.
Based on this, Prof. Wei proposed new thinking about the normative view of terminology translation – unlike the traditional static normative view that emphasizes formal unity and results, the innovative normative view is should be based on the essence of “translation of terminology as transmission of knowledge” and focused on the process of continuous optimization. It is a dynamic view of norms. Prof. Wei went on to propose that going forward, terminology translation should be transformed from top-down to a paradigm which is bottom-up and top-down, and that translators, as the producers of translated names, should pay attention to the renewal of the normative view and the transformation of the translation paradigm.
Prof. Wei then expounded the issue of fidelity, rationality and validity of terms in traditional Chinese culture, citing the translations of “Dragon Boat Festival”, “Qi” and “Yin and Yang” as examples. According to Prof. Wei, the knowledge content and cultural connotation carried by terms of intangible Chinese cultural heritage (ICCH terms) have distinct historical specificity, and their linguistic symbols often reflect complex diversity in terms of formal representation. The communicative normativity of the use of ICCH terms is relatively weak. These characteristics face more practical problems in the process of cross-cultural translation and interpretation of ICCH terms. On this basis, Prof. Wei pointed out that the translator-centered standardization of the translation of ICCH terms for cross-cultural knowledge transmission runs through the whole process of the translation of ICCH terms.
Prof. Wei concluded that the unique cultural terms of each country represent the core concepts related to national culture and carry the knowledge content and ideological essence of the national culture of each country, and that their effective translation is a prerequisite for cultural exchange and mutual appreciation of civilizations. In the process of translating traditional Chinese culture into foreign languages, the translation of core cultural terms is crucial but difficult. To effectively translate cultural terms and promote the overall quality of Chinese traditional culture translation and interpretation, the guidelines for practice are essential.
Finally, Prof. Wei discussed with CFLC faculty and students whether Chinese translation of English acronyms is necessary, what standards should be applied in translating foreign names into Chinese, and how Chinese culture can better “go global”.
