Translating Foreign Health News for Public Education: A Critical Cultural Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This study examines how translated foreign health news contributes to public health education in China, with a particular focus on Cankao Xiaoxi’s translated news coverage of food and nutrition. Adopting a critical cultural discourse analysis framework that integrates Fairclough (2001)’s Critical Discourse Analysis and Liang (2019)’s model of news translation, the study analyzes 56 pairs of health-related reports published in 2025. Articles are manually coded for linguistic strategies (modal shift, substitution, softening, omission, adaptation, selection, addition) and for their educational, ideological and cultural functions. The findings show that Cankao Xiaoxi does not simply reproduce foreign health information, but strategically restructures it. At the linguistic level, translation recalibrates the strength, scope, and tone of health claims; at the editorial level, the use of omission, adaptation, selection, and addition remove or reframe sensitive content, and recontextualizes it within domestically familiar frames. Such process constructs readers as compliant recipients of family-oriented and individualized guidance, and meanwhile constraining possibilities for structural critique and broader inquiry. Overall, the study indicates that translated health news serves both educational and ideological purposes. It enhances the accessibility and perceived reliability of health advice, but also eliminates opportunities for critical reflection on social determinants of health. The analysis highlights the need for greater transparency in translational mediation, and for strengthened public media literacy in support of more reflective consumption of heath news.