Translations from TCM (Traditional Chinese medicine)

Question

I have asked Chinese co-workers & checked sites such as Iciba & Google Translate to no avail. I know that this is talking about 2 points used in TCM, but I have no idea how to translate these into English. I would appreciate help with the translation, but even more, I would appreciate some resource for translating this sort of specialized vocabulary in the future.

The specific sentence in question is:

贴于翳明或内关双侧穴位

Is it common to just say something like "the yi-ming acupuncture point" or does yi-ming translate into something in English?

Answer 1

There are plenty of places on the web where acupuncture points are mentioned in English like this: NeiGuan or Neiguan. In fact you can even do a plain Google search for "Neiguan" and there are plenty of results.

There are also some listings for Yiming but this doesn't seem to be as well known.

If you want to be precise I would add the Chinese next to it, like Neiguan (内关).

Looking at this chart provided by Wikipedia it shows how each of the points have a code, so it may also be more accurate to provide the code e.g. Neiguan-P6* and Yiming-EX-HN14*. An example of this format can be seen here.

^{*Note: Please don't take my answer as a point of reference for the exact codes to be used for these points. I have seen Neiguan listed variously as PE6, PC6 and P6. I am not a doctor.}

It is common for terms that have no English equivalent to use the romanisation of the Chinese without the tones. I suggest you try either using the romanisation along with some related terms e.g. "neiguan acupuncture" or use the Chinese and related English words e.g. "内关 acupuncture"

Answer 2

翳明 is just name of an acupuncture point. When we talk this to others, we usually just use the name itself.

Here's a brief explanation of the name. The character 翳 means "cover/shield". In terms of medicine, it refers to corneal opacity. 明 in classical Chinese has the meaning of "make clear-sighted". So, the meaning of the name reads "remove opacity and get clear-sighted (除去翳障重見光明)". It got this name because TCM doctors found that stimulating it could help on eyesight.

Again, when referring to acupoints, we can just use the name. The explanation of those names could be interesting, but they are not widely known.

Answer 3

I know this is kind of old but it seems to be missing some info:

(1) From Wiseman Chinese Medical Terms

翳明 (main acupoint name) Shielding Brightness

A quick Google search will show that this does have some use in other texts, i.e: Practical Therapeutics of Traditional Chinese Medicine by Yan Wu:

M-HN-13 yi ming (Shielding Brightness)

(2) From the Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine:

内关 **Inner Pass PC-6**

From From Wiseman Chinese Medical Terms:

(main acupoint name) PC-6

Inner Pass

This like wise can be found through a quick Google search, i.e: This article:

(NaturalNews) Pericardium 6 or Inner Pass (PC6, Neiguan) is one of the most well-known, highly researched and often utilized Acupuncture points.