98

This paper analyses a few extracts from health messages translated from French into Mooré, one of Burkina Faso major languages. Based on the fact that language and culture are closely linked, and that each language expresses a world vision, we try to show which cultural values translation, as an act of communication, displays. The analysis reveals that beyond their informative function, translated messages serve as a means for transmitting values that belong either to the culture of source texts or to that of the target texts. It is nonetheless obvious that instead of an equivalence-based approach, the translation of health messages into African languages must rather aim at functionality, an approach which focuses on the target audience and its culture.