New researcher and new resources!

Behind the scenes, there is always a research community working on Standard Translatable English. One of those researchers has just finished her PhD, and released a set of guidelines for using STE in public health communication contexts.

About the researcher

The researcher is Ida Stevia Diget, from Griffith University in Australia. Her research explores accessibility and cross-translatability in English language public health communication about COVID-19 and influenza. Other research includes investigating pathways to cross-translatable mental health screening tools. Ida is also a project officer at the PacMOSSI project (Pacific Mosquito Surveillance Strengthening for Impact) under James Cook University and the WHO.

What is this booklet?

This booklet outlines the Standard Translatable English Principles for Public Health (STEPs for Public Health), a set of research-grounded principles for creating translatable public health messaging. Following these principles creates content that is quick and easy to translate – whether translated by a professional translator or a community member. This is because the Standard Translatable English (STE) approach uses words that are cross-translatable, which means they can be found in all, or most, languages. Translators will often be able to create word-for-word translations of STE texts without complicated workarounds. STE has been used in many fields, such as language learning, agriculture, and heatwave risk communication. In recent years, researchers have been working on applying STE to the field of public health communication. This booklet communicates the findings of that research. It presents the core principles of STE for public health messaging. Together, these have been given the name Standard Translatable English Principles for Public Health, or “STEPs for Public Health”. This booklet was authored and designed by STE researcher Ida Stevia Diget.

How do I use this booklet?

This booklet is an entry point into using STE for public health communication. You can use the booklet when creating public health posters intended for translation. You can also use it when creating public health messages not intended for translation to make sure that any unofficial translations of the message have a lower risk of errors and misunderstandings. You can use the STE principles for any kind of English public messaging, but for illustrative purposes, this booklet provides examples of poster-based messaging focused on COVID-19 and influenza.

The booklet

STANDARD TRANSLATABLE ENGLISH PRINCIPLES FOR PUBLIC HEALTH — a guide to authoring communicable disease posters with translation in mind is available here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Ida and Lauren will present a related workshop hosted by Aarhus University on 23 October 2023. See more information here.