Standards of Textuality: Why Doesn’t Your Translated Content Count as a Text?

There is a sentence we see again and again in localisation reports: there are no errors in the translation, but the site still does not feel right. It sounds like a matter of opinion, yet there is a measurable framework behind it. Text linguistics has been defining for years now when a piece of content genuinely counts as a text.

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The standards of textuality sit at the core of that definition. There are seven of them, and when any one of them goes unmet, what is left stops being a text that communicates (Beaugrande and Dressler 1981, p. 3). A localised website or application is no exception.

Below we take the seven standards one by one, showing how each of them breaks in digital products and where you, as the buyer, should be looking.

What do the standards of textuality measure?

On the most widely cited definition in text linguistics, a text is a communicative occurrence that meets the seven standards of textuality. If one of the standards is not met, the text is non-communicative, and non-communicative texts do not count as texts. The definition looks severe, but it matches our everyday experience.

When you click a link and the page that opens has nothing to do with what you expected, your first thought is that the link is wrong. Then you decide the site is broken. What you are actually doing is noticing that a standard of textuality has not been met.

The standards do not carry the same weight in every context. Coherence and intentionality are usually the decisive pair (Hatim and Mason 1997). If the purpose of a product page is to persuade, then once the translation fails to carry that purpose, everything else is secondary.

The seven standards in a single table

The table below summarises the seven standards and the way each of them breaks in a digital product. You can use it as the first page of your localisation checklist.

Standard	When it is met	How it breaks in a digital product
Cohesion	Grammatical continuity on the surface	Fragmented strings produce inverted sentences
Coherence	Unbroken flow of meaning	A link leads to an unexpected page
Intentionality	The text was produced with a deliberate purpose	Persuasive copy turns into informative copy
Acceptability	Meaningful and relevant for the receiver	Examples that do not speak to the local user
Informativity	It carries new information	The same sentence repeats in three sections
Situationality	It fits the situation it appears in	Cheerful marketing language on an error screen
Intertextuality	It leans on earlier texts	A reference to a pattern unknown in the locale

The third column is not usually labelled a translation error in quality reports. Yet it is the column that shapes user satisfaction most. Teams that reduce the audit to grammar alone never see this layer at all.

Do not worry about the order when you use the table. Three standards can break at once on a single screen. What matters is being able to name which standard has broken; the moment it is named, the problem turns into a work item you can share with your supplier, and the argument over whose job the fix is gets shorter.

Cohesion and coherence: surface and meaning

Cohesion is the way the elements on the surface are tied to one another by grammatical links. Conjunctions, references and the use of pronouns belong to this layer. Coherence, by contrast, is about the continuity of meaning, and it is built when the user brings prior knowledge into play.

The difference shows up in a concrete example. You understand the warning that appears when you type your password incorrectly, because you have seen that pattern many times before. Even if the warning on its own is short and dry, the flow of meaning still forms. What makes that happen is not the grammar on the surface but the experience you bring with you.

In localisation, the danger appears when a habit of the source language has no counterpart in the target language. If the user does not recognise the pattern, they cannot build the flow of meaning. This is why translating error messages and system warnings word for word is usually the wrong call; what you need is the pattern already established in the target language.

Another feature of coherence is that it is dynamic rather than static. The flow of meaning does not sit inside the text; it arises where the user’s world knowledge meets the information the text offers. The same interface can be coherent for an experienced user and disjointed for someone arriving for the first time. You cannot audit this standard without defining your audience.

Intentionality and acceptability

Intentionality means that the text was produced with a deliberate intention: to inform, to describe or to persuade. In the discourse analysis tradition this is called rhetorical purpose (Hatim and Mason 1990, p. 178). Most digital texts carry more than one purpose.

The primary purpose of a promotional page is to persuade the reader to buy; its secondary purpose is to supply the necessary information. During translation the primary purpose can quietly turn into the secondary one. When a lively call in the source text becomes a technical feature list in the target text, the page no longer does its job.

Acceptability, in turn, is the text being meaningful and relevant for the receiver. Payment methods the local user does not recognise, institutions they have never heard of, or examples with no counterpart in their world all weaken this standard. The text has been translated correctly; it simply is not for the person reading it.

The way persuasive texts are built differs considerably from one language to another. A direct appeal that counts as effective in one language can come across as rude in another. This is why marketing sections tend to be rewritten to purpose rather than transferred word for word. The decision is yours; but when no decision is made, the default behaviour is word-for-word transfer.

Informativity and situationality

Informativity is the text carrying new information. In digital products this standard is usually broken by content management errors. When the same promotional paragraph is repeated in three separate sections, the user stops reading. Part of the translation budget goes on that repeated content as well.

Situationality is the text being appropriate to the situation it is presented in. Using a jokey register on a payment error screen, or everyday expressions in a serious corporate announcement, damages this standard. A tone that works in the source language may not suit the same situation in the target culture.

These two standards explain why a style guide is a necessity rather than a luxury. If it is not written down which tone belongs in which section, the decision falls to the translator, and every translator decides differently. The result is a brand voice that shifts from section to section.

The informativity standard also brings a measurable side benefit. Teams that strip out repeated content lower both their translation volume and their maintenance load. Seeing the repetition rate in the source text before it goes live can have a marked effect on the translation budget in the following period.

Intertextuality: the user’s earlier experience

Intertextuality is a text leaning on other texts in order to be understood. In digital products this standard operates with great force. Users learned how a shopping basket works not from your site but from the dozens of sites they visited before it.

Departing from the names established in the local market is therefore risky. Giving the basket a creative name of your own does not make your brand distinctive; it switches off everything the user already knows. In localisation, the place for creativity is marketing copy, not navigation elements.

Intertextuality is also an opportunity. A team that knows which patterns have taken hold in the target market lowers the user’s cognitive load. Measuring this is simple enough: list the navigation labels used by competing sites and the shared naming emerges quickly.

The same logic explains why fraud attempts work. A fake page imitates familiar patterns, and so it creates a feeling of coherence in the user. That shows how strongly these patterns operate. As a legitimate product, your job is to use the same patterns consistently.

Turning the standards into a checklist

The seven standards look theoretical, but they can be turned into a practical audit tool. The work involved is to identify three typical user journeys through your product and to ask the seven questions at every step. Those journeys usually run from the home page to payment, from a help search to a solution, and from sign-up to first use.

The audit should be carried out by someone other than the person who did the translation. A translator reading their own text fills in the missing context in their head; the user cannot. An independent review pass therefore catches most of the standards in one go.

It also helps to report findings by the name of the standard rather than as errors. Saying that situationality breaks on this screen, instead of saying that this sentence is bad, takes the discussion out of the realm of taste. We run this audit as an independent pass within our localisation services.

The Türkiye context

In Turkish, cohesion is built largely through suffixes. Reference relations that English handles with separate words attach to the verb as suffixes in Turkish. When interface text is broken into fragments those suffixes are lost and the link on the surface snaps. The result is a set of sentences that are individually correct but do not read together.

In terms of intertextuality, the Türkiye market has an accumulated experience of its own. Users are accustomed to the naming conventions established on domestic e-commerce sites. When a platform arriving from abroad ignores those conventions, the interface feels foreign even when it is technically correct.

The situationality standard, for its part, comes to the fore in regulatory texts. In sections such as a privacy notice or a distance selling contract, the expected register is formal. Keeping the marketing tone going in those sections produces hesitation in the user rather than confidence. This article is for general information only and is not legal advice.

What does this mean for you?

If you have no shared vocabulary when you discuss translation quality, the discussion turns into personal preference. The standards of textuality give you that shared vocabulary and let you talk to your supplier in the same terms. The sequence below can be applied on your first project.

1. Identify three typical user journeys through your product and write them down.
2. Review each journey against the seven standards one by one and record your findings by the name of the standard.
3. List the patterns already established in the target language for error messages and system warnings.
4. Compare your navigation labels with competing sites, and save creativity for marketing copy.
5. Write the tone decisions for each section into your style guide instead of leaving them to the translator.

Before you decide whether to run this audit with your own team or bring it in from outside, you need to see your scope. If you send us the number of sections in your product and your language pairs through our quote form, we can put together a realistic framework.

Frequently asked questions

How many standards of textuality are there?

Text linguistics counts seven: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. If one of these standards is not met, what results does not count as a text that communicates.

Are cohesion and coherence the same thing?

No. Cohesion concerns the grammatical links on the surface, coherence the continuity of meaning. A translation can be flawless in grammatical terms and disjointed in its flow of meaning; users notice the second fault faster.

Which standard counts as the most critical in localisation?

The literature treats coherence and intentionality as the two most decisive standards. If the user cannot see what the text is there for, or cannot build the flow of meaning, meeting the other standards will not rescue the outcome.

How do I audit these standards on my own site?

Turn the seven standards into a short checklist and follow three typical user journeys with it before you go live. On the path from the home page to the payment step, checking on every screen whether the purpose and the flow of meaning have been preserved will surface most of the problems.

References

• Jiménez-Crespo, M. A. (2024). Localization in Translation. Routledge, pp. 123–125.
• de Beaugrande, R. and Dressler, W. (1981). Introduction to Text Linguistics. Longman, p. 3.
• Hatim, B. and Mason, I. (1990). Discourse and the Translator. Longman, p. 178.