A review of the history of research on terminology with Chinese characteristics

Аннотация

This article traces the emergence and development of terminology research in China, and CITATION argues that terminology research in China has gone Safarova Iroda. (2025). A review of the history of research on terminology through three historical periods: from the study of with Chinese characteristics. The American Journal of Social Science and scientific and technological translation theory, the study Education Innovations, 7(04), 43–47. https://doi.org/10.37547/tajssei/Volume07Issue04-06 of terminology ontology to the systematic, comprehensive and healthy development, and focuses on its representative characteristics. The paper COPYRIGHT describes the development process and status of © 2025 Original content from this work may be used under the terms terminology from two aspects: theoretical research and of the creative commons attributes 4.0 License. applied research. The research in terminology theory arose from the need to normalize scientific and technical terminology, and the theory of terminology guided and enriched the practical work. In the field of applied research, we combined the theory of terminology with China’s national conditions and widely applied it in the practical work of normalizing nouns and terminology, and gradually penetrated into the fields of news publishing, foreign language translation and dictionary compilation, achieving great results. Keywords: Chinese terminology; discipline construction; historical review; practical work; foreign language translation; dictionary compilation. Introduction: Terminology emerged in the mid-20th century. It is a comprehensive discipline that covers many disciplines such as linguistics, ontology, logic and all fields of science and technology, and has obvious interdisciplinary characteristics. Due to the global nature of science and technology, terminology is also international, and countries around the world have common research and their own unique descriptions in this field. Chinese characters are different from Western phonetic symbols and have their own unique The American Journal of Social Science and Education Innovations 43 https://www.theamericanjournals.com/index.php/tajssei The American Journal of Social Science and Education Innovations characteristics. Terminology, as a universal subject in accelerating the process of introducing foreign nouns the world, has universal rules that are conducive to the and terms. There are also those who advocate a middle progress of science and technology. Therefore, it is way. For example, Mr. Zhou Youguang proposed the urgent to study the common features and topic of “dual terms of science and technology”, which characteristics between Chinese terminology theory are compatible with “nationalization” and and the terminology theories of other countries in the “internationalization” [2]. world. Although the Chinese academy started its Despite the intertwining of various points of view, the research in terminology relatively late, it has achieved language and translation communities have noticed great progress and remarkable results in the past two that Chinese terminology has actually embarked on the or three decades [1]. path of “nationalization” (in the past, only 0.5% of In 1978, China entered the “Spring of Science” and in Chinese terminology contained elements of 1995, it began to implement the strategy of building a transliteration). Noting that it is difficult to use free country through science and education, ushering in a translation as the main method of “nationalization”, Mr. new era of rapid development of science and Ye Fei Sheng proposed that free translation should meet technology. With the implementation of a series of two conditions: first, the validity period should be science and technology policies, the deepening of limited; second, the internal form should be institutional reforms, and the establishment of a transparent, that is, it can be understood “literally” [3]. system promoting science and technology At that time, some experts also proposed other development and personnel training, various scientific methods and details for translating nouns. and technological works have developed rapidly, and In April and October 1985, the National Committee for urgent demands have been made for the the Review of Natural Science Terminology and the standardization of scientific and technological terms. National Technical Committee for Terminology The standardization of scientific and technological Standardization jointly issued the following documents: terms has been conducive to the development of since then, experts and scholars from China national science and technology, the improvement of representing various disciplines have been able to China’s discourse system, and the occupation of the participate more actively in the work of the commanding heights of world scientific and International Organization for Standardization (ISO), technological development. especially its Technical Commit