Translating from Practitioners to Patients : Adaption for a new type of readership

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to analyse the ways in which a Swedish translation of an English text intended as a manual for health practitioners needs to be adapted in order to function as an informative text aimed at patients, their families and other laymen interested in the subject. Focus lies on adaption of terminology, style, and target reader perspective. For this paper, selected parts of an English source text were translated into Swedish, and different adaptions prompted by the change in genre, intended target reader and purpose of the text were noticed and subsequently analysed. In the analysis, it became clear that translation of terminology can be treated through addition, omission or generalization where subject specific terms are not relevant for the intended readers. Under the subject of style, formality level defined through the usage of nominalizations and passives was analysed, and here, modulation and transposition proved useful for adapting the formality level to better fit the purpose of the text. Under the category of target reader perspective, omission, generalization and modulation of different kinds were translation strategies used to turn the focus from the intended ST reader to the intended TT reader. Defining or re-defining the subject of different actions was also necessary to shift the perspective from one intended group of readers to another. Finally, the analysis showed that different kinds of adaption may be purposeful in different situations.