Challenges on Translating the Elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Hong Lou Meng

This study aimed to investigate the challenges associated with translating elements of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) within the context of Hong Lou Meng. Building upon the identified challenges, the study delved into solutions aimed at employing effective strategies in the translation of diverse Traditional Chinese Medicine. This study employed a qualitative method to investigate the translation of TCM terms in the English version translated by Hawkes and Minford (2014) from the perspective of translation aesthetics. The study carefully chose representative examples from different facets of TCM in the source text, encompassing TCM theories, disease diagnosis and syndromes, and terminologies and formulas. The translated content was juxtaposed with the source text to scrutinize the translation methods employed in the translation. Based on this analysis, the study assessed both the achievements and shortcomings in translating various TCM terms from the perspective of translation aesthetics. Ultimately, the study consolidated solutions and compensation methods on how to retain the aesthetic and cultural value of Chinese medicine elements in the translation of classical literature. The study findings indicate that the challenges of translating TCM lie in conveying the difficult TCM theories, the recreation of the strict and beautiful language structures in disease diagnosis and syndromes, and the accurate reproduction of TCM terminologies. It shows that to overcome the challenges, translators should adopt various methods flexibly, such as annotating the TCM theories, recreating the content using similar sentence structures by adopting domestication plus transliteration, or foreignization plus annotation to translate Chinese medicine terminologies and formulas.