In the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, scholars in China borrowed the Japanese-Chinese translated terms for Western scientific words. Yet some of them, even the important ones, were inaccurate, confusing or even misleading. This article, taking the political terms as a case study, traces the origins of the Japanese-Chinese, the original Chinese, and the English terms, and by analyzing their relations and differences, it summarizes three reasons for their inappropriate translations: misconception, unbalanced extension, and false equivalence respectively with a view to providing references for the regulation of the political terms circulated so far, as well as suggestions for new translations.