Epistemic stance in the translations of Chinese medicine classics: a case study of Huang Di Nei Jing

This article is a contrastive study of epistemic stance in the English translations of the Chinese medical classic by clinicians and non-clinicians. Epistemic stance is concerned with a translator’s certainty about the proposition of a statement and is highly consequential to information validity. B...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Text & talk 2022-03, Vol.42 (2), p.279-302
Main Authors: Yue, Yan, Wu, Canzhong
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chinese languages
Contrastive analysis
domain knowledge
epistemic stance
Epistemology
Interpreters
Medical personnel
medical translation
Medicine
Systemic functional linguistics
Traditional Chinese medicine
Translation
Translations
Translators
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Summary:This article is a contrastive study of epistemic stance in the English translations of the Chinese medical classic by clinicians and non-clinicians. Epistemic stance is concerned with a translator’s certainty about the proposition of a statement and is highly consequential to information validity. By drawing on the systemic functional linguistic framework and using two sets of translations of the Chinese medicine classic, , by both clinicians and non-clinicians, the study investigates the linguistic choices concerning epistemic stance. The findings show that epistemic stance is closely related to the translators’ domain knowledge and expertise, with clinician-translators more likely to express their epistemic stance in the translations. However, this study also finds a counterintuitive epistemic pattern: non-clinician translators express more certainty in their translations.
ISSN:1860-7330
1860-7349
DOI:10.1515/text-2020-0025