SSL-Laien

The Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano aims to ensure the readability of their texts as well as the quality of their translations and translation processes. The compulsory e-learning modules on occupational health and safety (OHS) are written by domain experts, who are usually not trained to communicate with laypersons. Given their expertise in language, in terminology and in adapting texts to the target audience, we can assume that translators have the necessary skills to support and facilitate this type of asymmetrical communication between experts and laypersons. The e-learning modules produced by the Province are therefore used as a case study, since they have to be available in two languages and address a heterogeneous audience with diverging levels of education. The case study will investigate the role of translators and the translation process in asymmetrical communication contexts. The expected results of the project are a proposal to optimise the revision and translation workflow of texts written by experts for laypersons, including the possible integration of translation memories and machine translation. Qualitative and quantitative data on text readability will be collected before and after revision/adaptation.

First results suggest that translators can work easily at the level of readability, due to their language competences (e.g. by shorting sentences, reducing nominalisations and passive sentences, achieving greater terminological consistency, finding less cumbersone strategies for inclusive language) but are also able to work at the level of comprehensibility due to their domain competences (e.g. by adding information necessary to fill lay peoples' knowledge gaps, removing unnecessary complex information, changing the order of information etc.).