Modern Social Science Research

Drawing on creative rebellion theory, this study constructs a three-dimensional evaluation framework—core excavation, cultural elucidation, and target-language adaptation—to examine four types of culture-loaded terms in the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon: philosophical concepts, foundational medicine, disease diagnosis and treatment, and health cultivation. A parallel comparison is conducted between Li Zhaoguo’s authoritative human translation and the AI-generated translations of ChatGPT-4o and KIMI. The human translation, prioritizing foreignization, excels in cultural fidelity, terminological precision, and conceptual integrity. In contrast, AI translations favor domestication, enhancing readability but often narrowing concepts and eroding cultural nuances. These differences stem from the translator’s cultural agency versus AI’s pragmatic adaptability. This research extends creative rebellion theory into digital translation, offering empirical insights for AI cultural optimization, TCM terminology standardization, and human-AI collaborative translation.

Creative treason; TCM culture-loaded words; English translation; Huangdi Neijing; Human-machine translation comparison