NOMINATIVE AND ATTRIBUTIVE EXOPHORIC REFERENCE IN FOREIGN PRESCRIPTION MEDICATION INSTRUCTIONS AS TEXT REFERENTIAL IDENTITY MEANS IN SPECIALIZED TRANSLATION

Abstract

Purpose of the study: The present paper examined nominative and attributive exophoric reference and their textual referents in the English prescription medication instructions (henceforth is PMI).In the focus of research, there were the key referents that define the translator’s referential knowledge for the PMIs and the cognitive features of the referents verbalized in PMIs by means of nominative and attributive exophoric reference. Nominative and attributive types of exophoric reference and their textual referents ensuring the referential identification of a foreign text and facilitating its understanding are in the focus of this research. Methodology: The methodology of this study includes the following key methods: the method of contextual analysis; distributional analysis; descriptive method; quantitative evaluation method. The texts of prescription medication instructions, e.g. for “Nurofen For Children”, “Ibuprofen 400mg Tablets”, “Panadol”, etc., displayed on the Internet sites of pharmaceutical companies /pharmacies make the corpus of our observation material. Main findings: Using English PMIs as the object of specialized translation, it is established that the PMI text exophoric referential net is created primarily by means of medical terms verbalizing objects and subjects of a PMI text (nominative exophoric reference) and verbal referents of their qualities and features (attributive exophoric reference), actualizing a foreign specialist text referential identity and thus facilitating its understanding. Applications of this study: The study is intended for translators, translation students, ESP researchers. The education of specialized translation professionals should incorporate special text referential analysis as part of pre-translation analysis facilitating special text decoding and optimizing its understanding and subsequent translation. Novelty/Originality of this study: the Nominative Exophoric Reference and Attributive Exophoric Reference creating the Text Exophoric Referential Net are described for English Prescription Medication Instructions as specialist texts intended for translation. It has been found out that both the source and target PMI texts relate to the same three entities of objective reality: MEDICINAL PRODUCT, HEALTH DISORDER, and PATIENT constituting the PMI’s referential identity.