known sufferer of depression

18:38 Dec 12, 2014 

OK. I didn't mean to imply that your question was pointless! Of course it's always helpful to know what people mean. But in this case, unless further information is available, it's simply impossible to be sure. I'm very familiar with the problem you're describing. In the languages I know, it wouldn't arise in this particular case: in other words, it really wouldn't matter how the doctor knew it; the translation would be the same in any case. But I don't know any Polish, so I don't know what your options are. If there's no satisfactory way of saying just what the ST says, fair enough. My point was simply that saying anything more specific than "it is known" runs the risk of falsifying the original and claiming that this doctor said something he/she didn't in fact say. My position is still exactly the same as B D Finch's: the statement is probably based on records but there can be no certainty about this.

18:25 Dec 12, 2014 

As a matter of fact knowing what someone means helps enormously in translation; as a translator yourself I am sure you have come across situations when something sounds ambiguous but is stylistically correct in one language but the same ambiguity is difficult to reflect in another language without sounding artificial or stilted; I could not really say in Polish "known" in this context so I just wanted to check with native speakers whether I could possibly interpret it as "as per records" or something to this effect; sorry if you think my question is pointless.

18:50 Dec 11, 2014 

Many years ago, working as a local authority housing officer, I often knew sensitive information, including medical information, about tenants on a need to know basis and without necessarily seeing any medical records. Some of that information was generally known in the department. Some of it was on our files, if there was a good reason for it to be there (other departments that didn't have the right to such information were not permitted to access our files).

I suspect that in a busy A&E department, people similarly share information, say things to each other like "Oh no, X is in here again they have ... " and that somebody filling a form in in a hurry, before rushing off to deal with something else, may well fail to check the medical records and fill in something on the basis of what is generally "known" in the unit. If this happens, there is a risk that they will have got it wrong. Therefore, it could be dangerous for a translator to add a source of information if it is not mentioned in the source text.

14:50 Dec 11, 2014 

What you are really asking is how the doctor knows (or claims to know) that the patient is suffering from depression, and we can't possibly tell for sure. You might say that a doctor would not make such a statement on the basis of anything other than medical records, but we can't be certain about that. Indeed, you could argue that if the doctor wrote this on the basis of medical records, it would have been more natural just to say "sufferer from depression"; "known" could be taken to imply that it is common knowledge. The point is that this we just can't tell; even very high probability is not certainty.

What I'm wondering is why you want to know how it is known. I presume you have to translate this into Polish. Is it really not possible to do so without stating or implying the source of the knowledge? In principle, the translation should not add information that is not present in the source text. If you produce a Polish version that says this patient's medical records show that he/she suffers from depression, and this is not in fact the case (which it might not be, or least the doctor might not know that it is), this could matter.