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It is difficult for a
non-Chinese speaking person to learn Chinese herbal therapy. The
main reason is that most of the literatures and books have not
been translated into English yet. You may find some books on the
introduction of the herbal therapy, from which you may learn the
basic idea and term explanation, but it is far away enough to
allow you to practice the herbal therapy in your clinic.
It is difficult to
translate the books from Chinese to English for several reasons:
(1), the old Chinese is
different from the current Chinese. It is the same as the old
English is not the current English. The ways to express their
meaning by old Chinese masters are somehow different from the
current Chinese. A translator must have a good knowledge of old
Chinese;
(2), along the long
history, the older books have been re-copied by hands from
person to person, that created some errors from the original
books. There could have quite different opinions, among later
doctors, for how to understand the original meaning of the
masters;
(3), the translator must
be a clinic doctor, not a scholar or a researcher. The person
must have rich clinic experience to understand the meaning of
the words in the old TCM books;
(4),
the translator must also know English as well, so be able to
find as much as possible proper English expression to explain
the meaning in English. In translation industry, we believe that
the best way is to let a translator translate a foreign language
into the translator’s mother language. It is so hard to have
such person in the world. We have experience that, to translate
English books into Chinese, the Chinese version could be very
interesting in its spirit, while the book from Chinese to
English (such as translate the Chinese poem into English), the
English version becomes very plain, no taste any longer;
(5), The Chinese have
different ways or philosophy to look at the nature, the body,
structure and function,
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so have quite different ways to express their
meaning, compared with the English speaking people. Therefore,
the difficulty is not only the term that is new to the English
speaking people, but in many times, it needs the reader to
change the ways of thinking. So many times, there is no proper
word in English to express exactly the meaning in Chinese. To
solve this problem, we insist to use the Chinese word exactly
(of course in Pinyin, not in character), rather than to find a
English word that is closer to the Chinese in meaning.
There are tens of
thousands of books in TCM herbal therapy. The education system
introduced here, the main one is the << Shanghan Lun >>,
is
not at all the ones used as text book by almost any of the TCM
schools in China or in other countries.
The book series here
are not touch as text book in China,
for some major reasons:
(1), there has been
severe infectious diseases in China
in history, at which time, doctors use different herbs to solve
the disasters. The herbs used at that time are less in doses,
and appear more “safe” (so called) than the herbs used in this
book. Thereafter, the doctors like that kinds of herbal formula
in clinic;
(2), the text book
currently used in the TCM school in China
and out of China
is set up mostly by doctors they are originally western medicine
doctor and learned the TCM later. They have no strong TCM back
ground for the significance of the books here in the TCM
education. The textbook they organized is based on the western
medicine textbook style, which appear simple and easy to
understand and to remember, but not a good ways to meet the
clinic needs;
(3), the dose introduced in the book <<
Shanghan Lun >> has been less used (for some already known
reasons now) by later doctors, so their clinic effects are not
as excellent in clinic;
(more)
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