Lexical Strategies in Intralingual Translation between Registers

Abstract

Being concerned with (what has hitherto been) a marginal and under-researched area of Translation Studies, viz. intralingual translation, this paper focuses on the particular type of monolingual rewriting which consists in the transformation of specialized LSP texts into a new text type aimed at lay readership. As a specific example of this type of transformation, the paper investigates the rewriting of pharmaceutical product specifications into medicinal package inserts (so-called patient information leaflets). In Translation Studies terms, in other words, the pharmaceutical texts are treated as source texts and the patient information leaflets as target texts. The paper examines certain core intralingual translation strategies employed to make the specialized information accessible to the non-expert audience. The focus is primarily on strategies employed to convert medical terminology into more lay-friendly wordings. The exact linguistic nature of these strategies is examined, and the ways in which they contribute to target-text lay-friendliness are charted.