Comparison Between 2022 World Health Organization International Standard Terminologies of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the Existing Traditional Chinese Medicine Terminology Standards——On Visceral Term Section / 世界科学技术-中医药现代化

ABSTRACT

Objective The standardization of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)term in English is a precondition for the internationalization of TCM.Therefore,in the current study similarities and differences on visceral terms between 2022 World Health Organization International Standard Terminologies of Traditional Chinese Medicine(abbreviated as WHO22)and the existing International Standard Chinese-English Basic Nomenclature of Chinese Medicine compiled by the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies(abbreviated as ISNTCM)and the WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region(abbreviated as ISTTM)were discussed.Methods The electronic versions of the existing terminology standard were collected,and terms on viscera section were extracted and converted into Excel files.Terms on visceral section in the WHO22 were also processed with the same method.The similarities and differences between WHO22 and ISNTCM as well as those between WHO22 and ISTTM were compared.Results In the WHO22,there are 170 terms on viscera section,in ISTTM,there are 83 terms,and in ISNTCM 215 terms.Generally,ISTTM and WHO22 are consistent in visceral terms,but in WHO22 the names of the five zang-organs,six fu-organs,and extraordinary fu-organs as single terms are not listed.ISNTCM and WHO22 share the same visceral terms with slight difference.Conclusion WHO22 reflects the latest achievements of the English translation standard of TCM,and is the result of study and cooperation between Chinese and foreign scholars.However,there are inconsistencies in translations of certain terms,which might be caused by no clarification on translation principles or term selection principles.Besides,new research method such as corpus linguistics are not applied in the context of the rapid development of information technology in WHO22.