Linguistic approaches to Swedish authorities' web-based information in English

Sammanfattning: Most authorities in Sweden provide an English language version of their web sites, in the form of a translation or an adaptation of the Swedish original text. The first part of this thesis includes an analysis of the linguistic quality of a selection of texts from authorities on three administrative levels: state, regional and municipal. The second part investigates the correlation between linguistic quality and how the presented information is perceived by potential readers. A questionnaire study with authentic sentence examples reveals that particularly grammatical inadequacies, found to be the most common in the first study, have a negative impact on comprehensibility, acceptance of wording and the perceived reliability of the information. Correspondingly, sentences that are without inadequacies are generally viewed more positively. The results suggest that linguistic inadequacies are liable to lead to unwanted consequences, while accuracy enhances the comprehensibility and reliability of the informational content.