Knowledge Representation in Travelling Texts: from Mirroring to Missing the Point!

Today, information travels fast. Texts travel, too. In a corporate context, the question is how to manage which knowledge elements should travel to a new language area or market and in which form? The decision to let knowledge elements travel or not travel highly depends on the limitation and the purpose of the text in a new context as well as on predefined parameters for text travel. For texts used in marketing and in technology, the question is whether culture-bound knowledge elements should be domesticated or kept as foreign elements, or should be mirrored or moulded—or should not travel at all! When should semantic and pragmatic elements in a text be replaced and by which other elements? The empirical basis of our work is marketing and technical texts in English, which travel into the Latvian and Danish markets, respectively.