WHO InternatIOnal Standard termInOlOgIeS On tradItIOnal medIcIne

6Introduction1) Code2) Term (English)3) Chinese (Han) Character4) Definition/DescriptionIn the Classics part, the contents are formatted in the order of Code, Chinese (Han), Pronunciation, Author/Editor,Year Issued, Country and Preferred English title/Annotation. The Year Issued is for the readers’ convenience forunderstanding streams of development in the field of traditional medicine. Since the Year Issued for some classics canbe controversial, each mother country of original classics has responsibility to determine the Year Issued.Notes on the standard terminologyThe words before and after the symbol / are interchangeable, as they come from the same Chinese original. Forexample, “pattern/syndrome”, “pattern identification/syndrome differentiation”, “meridian/channel” and “network/collateral” can be written either as pattern or syndrome, pattern identification or syndrome differentiation, meridian orchannel, and network or collateral.English is chosen as the main language for the international standard terminology for TRM in the Western PacificRegion, because it is the most commonly and internationally used language. Following each term in English, Hancharacters are attached as the given original terms. In doing so, the original complex form of a Han character isemployed rather than the simplified characters, because some countries may simplify Han characters differently.The International Standard Terminologies project has been conducted in parallel with information standardizationprojects like international classification for traditional medicine (ICTM), thesaurus and clinical ontology in traditionalmedicine. The outcome of IST is the bases for each of these information standardization projects. This 1st IST version,however, still does not fully satisfy all the needs of the three countries; therefore, further efforts will be required inthe future. The Regional Office for the Western Pacific and key countries such as China, Japan, and Republic ofKorea should make every effort for continuous revision. During the 2nd Informal Consultation on Development ofInternational Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine held in Tokyo, Japan from 27 to 29 June 2005, therewere discussions regarding the inclusion of herbal drugs and formulas. Participants concluded that those sets of termscan be included in future editions in appropriate ways. In the same manner, other traditional medicine terminologiesin our Region will be added to this ongoing series of WHO IST.The compilation process of IST also has revealed that terminology standardization is a very challenging task due tovarieties of meanings and the historical background for TRM concepts. Therefore the conventional way to compilea standard nomenclature has some limitations. In order to overcome such limitations, The Regional Office for theWestern Pacific and the key countries should be responsible for developing new tools, such as ontology in TRM,describing the complicated relations of traditional medical concepts in machine readable language.The philosophical background of this suite of standard terminology is Taoism. The first chapter of Laozi, the “bible”of Taoism, starts with “ 道 可 道 , 非 常 道 . 名 可 名 , 非 常 名 ” and the latter sentence can be translated as “A name thatcan be named is not the constant name.” This shows Laozi’s scepticism on artificial ways, including languages. Thevarious and subjective expressions used in traditional Chinese medicine have proven his insightfulness in this field.However, without languages, how can we communicate with each other? Just as an idea may be inferred from itsshadow, though not fully grasping “ 常 ”, at least we are expecting “ 可 ” for readers to understand traditional medicinein our Region by using this international standard terminology.