After the Opium War, a large number of western scientific treatises were translated into Chinese, including William Whewell’s An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics (1836), John Hersche1’s Outlines of Astronomy (1851), J. Tydnall’s Sound(1874) and Light (1870)and so on. Most knowledge in these works was introduced in China for the first time, and many physical conceptions were also expressed in Chinese for the first time. Comparing the original texts with translations, this paper will analyse the method and characteristic of physical terms translation. At the same time the situation in Japan and differences between Chinese translation and Japanese translation of physical terms will be discussed.