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Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science

ISSN Online: 2576-0548 ISSN Print: 2576-0556 CODEN: JHASAY
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ArticleOpen Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.04.018

From TCM to the World: Translating Culture-bound Terms for Global Health Communication

Ziyan Zhang, Binfeng Chen*

College of Foreign Languages, Fuzhou University Zhicheng College, Fuzhou 350002, Fujian, China.

*Corresponding author: Binfeng Chen

This work was supported by the National College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (Grant No. [S202513470024]).
Published: April 30, 2026

Abstract

Under a globalization background, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) gets more attention internationally because it is a unique medical system, but its cross-cultural dissemination meets a significant linguistic barrier because the translation of culture-bound terms makes it hard to spread TCM knowledge to Western countries where such concepts do not exist. These terms come from ancient Chinese philosophy and cosmology, and they carry cultural meanings that cannot find direct equivalents in Western medical English. This study examines how to translate such expressions. We explore a youth-led framework that can bridge this gap. Based on Cognitive Linguistics and cross-cultural translation theories, we use a “Three-Level Metaphorical Translation Model” that moves from literal translation to cultural metaphor unpacking and then goes to cognitive annotation, which is relevant to a global audience. The results show that this model helps improve the accuracy. It also improves the cultural resonance of translated terms. We transform abstract concepts like “Spring corresponds to wood” and “liver qi stagnation” into health guidance that can be understood by ordinary people. This study helps understand how systematic translation strategies can support cross-cultural health communication. Also, it provides a practical framework that can be replicated for translating culture-bound terms in TCM.

Keyword

Culture-bound terms; Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM); cross-cultural translation; three-level metaphorical translation model; global health communication

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Copyright

© 2026 by the author(s).
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not modified or adapted.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

How to cite this paper

From TCM to the World: Translating Culture-bound Terms for Global Health Communication

How to cite this paper: Ziyan Zhang, Binfeng Chen. (2026) From TCM to the World: Translating Culture-bound Terms for Global Health Communication. Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, 10(4), 506-512.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2026.04.018