Discourse of Drug Information for Experts and Patients
31author (Zethsen Korning 2009: 800) refers, among others, to functional
translations, which meet different skopoi than the source text, which is
also the case in the present study. She therefore argues that an empirically
based description of intralingual translation would be more than desirable,
pleading for a more inclusive description (and not: finite definition) of
translation, which also considers intralingual translation. The proposed
description (Zethsen Korning 2009: 799) therefore is a combination of
Jakobson’s three dimensions (interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic
translation) and Toury’s (1985, 1995) conception of translation as transfer,
and reads as follows:
A source text exists or has existed at some point in time. A transfer has
taken place and the target text has been derived from the source text
(resulting in a new product in another language, genre (emphasis in italics
by the present writer) or medium), i.e. some kind of relevant similarity
exists between the source and the target texts. This relationship can take
many forms and by no means rests on the concept of equivalence, but
rather on the skopos of the target text.As suggested by the above quote, translation should be seen as a
communicative activity (both inter- and intralingually) that focusses on
transfer of knowledge in another form. This view perfectly fits with a
cognitively driven approach as used in the present study. As we will
describe in greater detail in the following section, PILs are indeed products
of knowledge transfer, whereby expert knowledge is reconceptualized and
framed from a patient’s viewpoint. This explains that there are on the one
hand relevant similarities between the source- and target text (at least in
structural and functional terms), but significant differences on the other as
well. To return to the question raised at the beginning, we may conclude
that PILs are rather different versions or conceptualizations of the same
message (Zethsen Korning 2009: 801) than new creations; both the
conceptual and linguistic modifications are motivated by the different
background knowledge, linguistic skills and expectations of the non-expert
target audience. Before we explore these differences starting from core
concepts developed within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, we
sketch out briefly some fundamental assumptions of this discipline.
Cognitive Linguistics
Since Cognitive Linguistics explores language based on our experience,
perception and conceptualization of reality it allows a more in-depth look
at the conceptual structures underlying specific linguistic phenomena such