Establishment of a TCM_Terminology Discussion List?

[Guest guest]

I appreciate ' (Tue, 5 Oct 2004 00:29:34 +0100) appraisal of the

situation, and second his suggestion of investigating an internet-based

project to make available and open to broad participation the

terminological translation process.

 

" Those making the case for full translation " (Bob Felt's phrase), including

many of us here, recognize that we need transparency back and forth between

the Chinese literature, classical and modern, and its English expression.

On the other hand, there's some resistance to a sense of enforced orthodoxy

that is perceived on the part of some adherents of the Wiseman system, and

strict publication standardization that appears to follow from it.

 

" The choice is not between simple, friendly words and difficult, nasty

words. The choice is whether or not to describe the whole Chinese idea. "

(from Bob Felt's WWW reply to Deadman) In my mind, the question arises: who

decides what 'the whole Chinese idea' might be? And what it the nature of

the idea? As I've questioned previously, historically enlightened

understanding, or officially sanctioned contemporary interpretation?

 

One authority (outside of this discussion) has noted that Deadman's book

fails to distinguish between the therapeutic acu-point functions

'regulation' and 'rectification', which is distinguished in the FCA and

PDCM. (Regulate, tiao2: to restore normal regular activity; rectify, li3:

to correct (counterflow, stagnant qi, or static blood))

 

'Li3' appears to have entered the vocabulary of 'yi'xue' with Song era

neo-Confucianism, reflecting a more general philosophical sense of moral

imperative. A key term in Chinese history (including the present). I

suspect that Wiseman's phrase, " rectifying the names " as the purpose of

dictionaries (as quoted by Deadman), employs this term. The 'whole Chinese

idea' includes the social-political sense, at an extreme, recognizable in

the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, which, as we known, also impinged on

medicine. I think this area of meaning helps express the apprehension, in

the face of an enforced translation scheme, on the part of many people.

 

A self-regulating internet-based process and tools could support the

'normal regular activity' wherein legit image differences among

individuals, of idea and expression via terminology, can be allowed.