Distance education is a borrowed and imported term amd educational endeavor from outside of China. However, beginning from the spring of 1998,the term long distance education (yuancheng jiaoyu,远程教育), which had been used among few educators in and out Chinese mainland,has got round fast and is tending to take the place of the well-accepted term distance education (yuanjuli jiaoyu, 远距离教育).The authors first present the historical changes Of the Chinese version of distance education terminology, analyze both distance education and longdistance education theoretically and linguistically,compare the two terms in their Chinese translation and recommend that distance education is a far better term, if not the best at this moment,than long-distance education.Finally, the authors emphasize the importance of the standardization of distance education terminology, and put forward a series of rules to standardize the terminology of distance education in Chinese language.
