Standardization and Its Discontents: Translation, Tension, and the Life of Language in Contemporary Chinese Medicine

Abstract

Various attempts at language standardization have been central in efforts to integrate Chinese medicine into a global, mainstream medical framework. At the same time, language has also proven critical in efforts to integrate Chinese medicine into personal frameworks of meaning as students around the globe grapple with multiple translations. In an effort to convey some of these diverse experiences of standardization and plurality of translations, this article offers four “snapshots” in the life of language standardization in Chinese medicine. These snapshots are derived from extensive, multisited ethnographic research conducted over four years in diverse settings in both China and the United States. The article thus offers an appreciation of standardization as an ongoing series of human encounters, a complex web of human networks shaping the always changing answers to seemingly simple questions about the motivations behind standardization, the methods used to create standards, and the implications of standards in an increasingly “global” Chinese medicine. As such, it contributes to an emerging “anthropology of translation” that underscores the role of human relationships, power, understanding, and interaction in translation.

Keywords:

• Chinese medicine
• translation
• standardization
• language

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research and a graduate student fellowship from the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program. I thank Elinor Ochs, Linda Garro, Yunxiang Yan, Hongyin Tao, and Ka-Kit Hui for their continued support and critical insights into this project. I also thank Volker Scheid and Sean Lei for organizing this special issue.

Notes

1 The survey was conducted informally during a session at the 2007 AAAOM. Participants responded electronically (anonymously) to a series of questions pertaining to what they would like to see the AAAOM focus on. Results showed that language/terminology was at the bottom of the list.

2 For publications of Li Zhaoguo's work, see Li 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2008d, 2008e, 2008f, Li 2009a, Li 2009b and Li and Pan 2009a and 2009b.