On Traditional Chinese Medicine Translation Principles from the Comparative Study of Meridian-Related Terminology Translation across Five Official Standards

Translation of traditional Chinese medicine terminology serves as the foundation for the global dissemination of traditional Chinese medicine techniques and culture. Research on the standardization of terminology translation has provided critical guidance in recent years, but problems such as inconsistent terminology translation and divergent translation strategies persist during the translation process. This paper examines five Traditional Chinese Medicine terminology translation standards, issued by institutions such as the State Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the World Health Organization, focusing on the differences in English translations of meridian-related terms and exploring the principles of Chinese medicine translation. Through corpus-based qualitative analysis and comparative research, the study reveals the differences in the translations of core terms such as “meridian” and “twelve meridians,” and the causes of the problems include insufficient coordination among translation management organizations, different focuses of translation strategies, and difficulties in dealing with cultural load words. Combining Fang Mengzhi’s pragmatic translation principles of “Purposefulnes, Compliance, Comprehensibility” and Li Zhaoguo’s five core principles: Naturalness, Conciseness, Ethnic identity, Back-translatability, and Prescriptiveness, the research proposes a refined five-dimensional principles for TCM terminology translation: Purposefulnes, Compliance, Consistency, Conciseness, and Comprehensibility, which can not only enrich the disciplinary framework of TCM translation studies but also provide fresh perspectives for the cross-cultural transference theory of culturally loaded terminology, offering referential value for the global dissemination of global traditional medicine.