The communication aspect of cross-border healthcare and translation and interpreting in this field are under-researched. This paper presents the results of a qualitative webpage content analysis of the multilingual websites of three Viennese abortion clinics. We investigate if and how content affected by a social and cultural taboo is (re)framed linguistically in versions addressed at patients from Poland, where abortion has been largely illegal since 1993. Our results show that awareness of the need for comprehensive target group-oriented information provision and quality translation and/or adaptation varies and that the Polish websites in our corpus tend to adopt a slightly different, more feminist and pro-choice point-of-view in comparison to the German versions.

This article is an attempt to represent the aspirations of the Polish aristocracy during the First World War by imagining the dreams of Maria Lubomirska – wife of Prince Zdzisław Lubomirski, arguably the most important Polish politician in Warsaw at the time. Lubomirska and her circle attended séances led by a popular medium, and they saw what they wanted to see, just as they perceived the changing political tides in the same way. Though aristocrats were in some sense already anachronistic at this time, they still wished to maintain their superior social and political position into the future. Lubomirska in particular envisioned an independent Poland led by a king. The idea of Poland becoming a monarchy may seem absurd in hindsight, but as the article shows, if we return to this moment in history without teleological presumptions it was a likely outcome until the last days of the war. Text in italics comes directly from Lubomirska’s diary.