Writer-reader relationship in multilingual health information websites on HIV and TB diagnostic testing: features of non-translated and translated Catalan texts in comparison with non-translated and translated English and Spanish texts

Natives and immigrants need cross-culturally adapted health information websites in each their own language. The reader’s decision-making process is influenced by the writer’s word choices. The author examines the characteristics of writer-reader relationship in the Catalan versions of multilingual health information websites on HIV and TB diagnostic testing. The study compares the non-translated Catalan texts to the English and Spanish non-translated texts, and the translated Catalan texts to their non-translated counterparts. A corpus of seventy-three multilingual health information websites underwent a mixed analysis implementing Clerehan et al.’s (2005) Evaluative Linguistic Framework, which is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics. There exist differences between the three non-translated sub-corpora. The Catalan non-translated sub-corpus expressed the most solidarity. The Spanish non-translated sub-corpus expressed a balance between solidarity and power. The English non-translated sub-corpus displayed the most power. Hedge words were the only writer-reader relationship marker with two statistically significant results: the English non-translated sub-corpus contained more than the Catalan non-translated sub-corpora, and the Catalan translated sub-corpus contained more than its non-translated counterpart. The latter difference indicates a lack of cross-cultural adaptation on the part of the translators. These results should serve researchers and professionals in public health and translation and language sciences for future studies and guidelines to improve multilingual health information text for diverse communities. URL: http://www.skase.sk/