My Hero Is You: Plain Language, Graphic Storytelling, and Translation at the Service of Children in Health Crisis Situations

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.mut.v18n1a08

Keywords:

graphic narrative, plain language, COVID-19, de-terminologization, translation

Abstract

In March 2020, the Reference Group of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergencies published My Hero is You, with the intention of addressing how children felt about the pandemic situation caused by COVID-19, as well as their caregivers and family members, and how this experience of health emergency and confinement affected their daily lives. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the processes of de-terminologization present in the story and in its translations into German (MHY_DE) and Spanish (MHY_ES), using the original English version (MHY_EN). Firstly, and following Campos (2013), the linguistic processes of de-terminologization will be analysed, offering examples in which the medical-health concept, the term or expression in English, and the corresponding translations into German and Spanish are determined; on the other hand, the role of the image and its value as a strategy of de-terminologization to achieve simplified, reformulated and adapted information to achieve health literacy among children.

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Author Biography

M. del Carmen Balbuena Torezano, Universidad de Córdoba

University Professor (Translation and Interpreting Area). She is coordinator of the HUM 947 Research Group “Text, Science and Translation”, and has been PI of the research projects Minne-Lexikon: Diccionario de términos y motivos de la lírica religiosa y profana de la Edad Media (Ref. FFI 2012-37392) and WeinApp: Sistema multilingüe de información y recursos vitivinícolas (Ref. FFI 2016-79785-R), and PI2 of the Eno-Andalus project; Cartografía de la Identidad Andaluza a través de la lengua y el turismo enológicos (Ref. 1381176-R). She is director of the journals Skopos and Franco-German Studies, and president of the International Congress “Science and Translation”. She coordinates the collections Translation, Text and Interferences, published by Narr (Germany) and Language, Literature and Translation - LeLiTrad, published by Peter Lang (Switzerland, Germany). He has supervised more than fifty Bachelor's and Master's theses and numerous doctoral dissertations on contrastive terminology and specialized translation. His working languages are German and English. He has publications in scientific journals, books and book chapters published by publishers included in the Scholar Publishing Index (SPI). At the international level, she collaborates regularly with Translation and Interpreting professors at the Universities of Innsbruck, Düsseldorf, Ca'Foscari Venezia, Jinan University and Salento.

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Published

2025-03-13

How to Cite

Balbuena Torezano, M. del C. (2025). My Hero Is You: Plain Language, Graphic Storytelling, and Translation at the Service of Children in Health Crisis Situations. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana De Traducción, 18(1), 130–152. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.mut.v18n1a08