Standardization of medical terminology in Chinese is an ongoing effort undertaken by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies in mainland China as well as the National Academy for Educational Research in Taiwan, Republic of China.

Compliance to officially ratified terms has been growing but variant forms remain widely used in published medical literature and daily professional communication.

Efforts at cross-straits standardization between the two bodies have culminated in a series of combined publications that documented all agreements and retained differences since 2002.

This site collates Chinese language medical terms officially sanctioned by the two above-named bodies as well as common variant forms used in published medical literature from mainland China, Republic of China (Taiwan) and Hong Kong SAR.

For medical terms yet to be standardized, variant forms are displayed in descending frequency of use in published literature.

Colloquial and TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) terms are NOT included unless they have been assimilated into professional use by mainstream medical practitioners in Chinese-speaking regions.

On either side of the straits, it is ironic but common for medical terms to have more than one “standardized form” due to disagreements between various work groups and subcommittees.

This site largely translates medical jargon in English to medical jargon in Chinese, and vice versa. End-users need to be wary of the contextual usefulness (or uselessness) of all information provided here.