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Intralingual translation and cascading crises: evaluating the impact of semi-automation on the readability and comprehensibility of health content

Rossetti, Alessandra orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-2162-9639 (2019) Intralingual translation and cascading crises: evaluating the impact of semi-automation on the readability and comprehensibility of health content. In: Federici, Federico M. orcid logoORCID: 0000-0002-0057-0340 and O'Brien, Sharon orcid logoORCID: 0000-0003-4864-5986, (eds.) Translation in Cascading Crises. Routledge (Taylor & Francis), Abingdon, UK. ISBN 9781138363410

Abstract
During crises, intralingual translation (or simplification) of medical content can facilitate comprehension among lay readers and foster their compliance with instructions aimed to avoid or mitigate the cascading effects of crises. The onus of simplifying health-related texts often falls on medical experts, and the task of intralingual translation tends to be nonautomated. Medical authors are asked to check and remember different sets of plain language guidelines, while also relying on their interpretation of how and when to implement these guidelines. Accordingly, even simplified health-related texts present characteristics that make them difficult to read and comprehend, particularly for an audience with low (health) literacy. Against this background, this chapter describes an experimental study aimed at testing the impact that using a controlled language (CL) checker to semi-automate intralingual translation has on the readability and comprehensibility of medical content. The study focused on the plain language summaries and abstracts produced by the non-profit organisation Cochrane. Using Coh-Metrix and recall, this investigation found that the introduction of a CL checker influenced some readability features, but not lay readers’ comprehension, regardless of their native language. Finally, strategies to enhance the comprehensibility of health content and reduce the vulnerability of readers in crises are discussed.
Metadata
Item Type:Book Section
Refereed:Yes
Subjects:Humanities > Language
Humanities > Translating and interpreting
Medical Sciences > Health
DCU Faculties and Centres:DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies
Research Institutes and Centres > ADAPT
Publisher:Routledge (Taylor & Francis)
Copyright Information:© 2019 Routledge (Taylor & Francis)
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
Funders:Irish Research Council (GOIPG/2017/1409), European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 734211.
ID Code:23796
Deposited On:02 Oct 2019 14:12 by Alessandra Rossetti . Last Modified 24 Jan 2020 16:12
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