This project is a collaboration between the founders of Lillemini, a Norwegian mobile phone application offering advice to parents about infants and sleep, and members of the research group Navigating Languages in Professional Practices (NaPP) at NTNU. The project was motivated by the company Lillemini’s wish to make their content available to non-Norwegian speakers, paired with the worrying dearth of information about translation of health-related information and about the translation of mobile apps, from Norwegian into other languages. Giving us access to themselves as a resource and to the content of the app, Lillemini provided the opportunity for a pilot case study which currently has two aims: 1) to chart the perception and negotiation, among the participants in the process, of the risks involved in translating this type of material in this type of context into English, and 2) to analyse - again with the concept of risk as a point of departure - translated texts from the app, with special focus on terminology central to the goals of the app. A third step will eventually consist in the production of a guidebook for other startups who would like to expand culturally and linguistically.

The method takes inspiration from ethnography and includes interviews with authors, commissioners, the management of the translation agency tasked with translating the Lillemini texts, and with the translator and the proofreader/quality assurer. We have also conducted observations of the work of the project leader at the agency, as well as collecting think-aloud protocols from both the translator and the quality assurer. Preliminary results indicate that there may be some interesting ‘communicative bottlenecks’ in processes involving health apps and their translation that might warrant further investigation.