Functional Translation Factors Influencing Quality Chinese Translation on Websites of Southeast Asian Medical Tourism Hospitals

Shuping He, Noor Aireen Ibrahim and Myoung Sook Kang
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Shuping He: Language Academy, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Noor Aireen Ibrahim: Language Academy, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia
Myoung Sook Kang: Language Academy, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru, Malaysia

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, 2025, vol. 9, issue 4, 423-439

Abstract: Chinese patients are a vital demographic for Southeast Asian hospitals competing for a larger share in the medical tourism market, where websites serve as essential platforms for information seeking, underscoring the need for high-quality translations on these hospital websites. Meanwhile, functionalists emphasize that a successful translation should be adequate for the situation and consider the texts’ communicative functions. This study aims to examine the functional-guided translation factors influencing quality Chinese translations on Southeast Asian hospital websites. The translation factors examined—situational factors and communicative functions—were analyzed through contextual and linguistic analysis, respectively, using manual text reading. Textual data were collected from 186 selected hospital websites across six countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam). Situational factors were analyzed following a coding rubric developed according to Munday’s (2016) proposal for the situational elements to be considered in a translational action, adapted to this study’s context. Communicative functions were classified adopting the threefold rubrics from Reiss’s (1971) Text Typology theory. Results provide empirical evidence that the situational factors of these texts include hospitals as text producer, potential Chinese patients as target audience, and that the intended goals of the text producer are to inform and appeal to potential consumers, among others. Findings also reveal that these texts integrate informative elements (e.g., detailing services and facilities) with appellative features (e.g., promotional and empathetic language) to both inform and appeal to potential audiences, challenging the notion of prioritizing a single dominant function. This study proposes a framework of translation factors that encompasses four situational factors and preserves dual-communicative functions, offering practical insights for enhancing translation quality on medical tourism websites and enriching functionalist approaches to specialized texts.

Date: 2025
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