EIRP Proceedings, Vol 15, No 1 (2020)

Abstract

The present paper intends to approach the pharmaceutical text as a genre of medical discourse, focusing especially on the translation of Drug Advertisements (DA).The aim of this paper is to investigate the translation issues raised by these texts and to offer some translation strategies in order to facilitate their understanding by the non – specialist readers. One of the novelty elements of this article consists in an interdisciplinary approach of the pharmaceutical promotion texts and their analysis from different perspectives: of translation and cultural studies, of linguistics, of pragmatics and of the advertising discourse. The advertising language uses textual as well as cultural strategies in order to get the reader’s attention. The understanding and the observance of the cultural values of the target audience is essential for an efficient approach to translation. Consequently, the translator needs to focus not only on the linguistic particularities of the text but also on respecting the socio-cultural differences of the target reader when interpreting the source-text. A difficult element in the translation of the pharmaceutical promotion text represents the cultural appropriateness of the sent message. The publicity of a product can be inefficient owing to the non-compliance with the socio-cultural differences in interpretation that leads to an inadequate promotion. The attempt of finding the optimum translation strategies in order to facilitate the understanding of these texts by the lay – receiver, preserving the meaning as well as the cultural atmosphere in the target text, represents another new element of this approach, given that, there are not many studies in the field literature that focus on this topic.