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Living translation in US Chinese medicine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2012

Sonya E. Pritzker
Sonya E. Pritzker
Affiliation:
UCLA Center for East-West Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, 1033 Gayley Ave., Ste. 111, Los Angeles, CA 90024spritzker@mednet.ucla.edu
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Abstract

This article demonstrates the ongoing, culturally situated and co-constructed nature of the translation of Chinese medicine from Chinese into English. Building upon scholarship in anthropology, sociolinguistics, and translation studies, this article contributes to the building of an anthropologically grounded theory of translation as an ongoing lived event, with implications far beyond the simple transfer of meaning from “source” to “target” languages. Through the examination of video and audio data collected over two years, I show how participants in classroom interactions at a southern California school of Chinese medicine not only interactively accomplish the work of translating specific Chinese terms, but also accomplish a great deal socially with such translation activity. Participants are thus shown to use translation as a platform for social positioning as well as a tool for socializing interlocutors into various notions of evidence and ideologies of language, both of which have implications for clinical decision-making in practice. (Translation, language ideologies, classroom interaction, Chinese medicine)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , June 2012 , pp. 343 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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