“Health literacy” is understood as a person’s capacity to make informed decisions in the healthcare field. Its enhancement might be seen as the prime ethical aim of all communication in that field, including the use of translation and interpreting. This talk asks if this particular kind of aim can be applied to other kinds of translation and interpreting as well. If so, enhancing informed choice could be the main aim of all forms of mediation, which then start to include pedagogical discourses as well. And this could happen in all fields, from the participative co-construction of literariness right through to the Habermasian ideal of a (multilingual) polity where all citizens feel they are co-authors of their laws. But to make such a massive extension of the model, we would have to know much more about the ways people actually use mediated texts.

Anthony Pym ist Professor für Translation und Interkulturelle Studien an der Universität Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spanien, Außerordentlicher Professor an der Universität Stellenbosch in Südafrika und Gastwissenschaftler am Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey, USA. Er erhielt ein langfristiges Forschungsstipendium vom Katalanischen Institut für Forschung und Höhere Studien, wo er Fellow ist. Professor Pym ist Autor, Co-Autor oder Herausgeber von 24 Bücher und mehr als 170 Artikeln über Translation und interkulturelle Beziehungen. Seit 2010 ist er Präsident der Europäischen Gesellschaft für Translationswissenschaft.