In welfare institutions, such as social services, conversation functions not only as a medium but also as a central working method. In this context, open-ended questions are often regarded as preferable to closed-ended ones, as they are believed to reduce professional influence on the conversation. However, open-ended questions can present challenges, particularly in contexts where clients are expected to showcase their personal qualities. This study investigates the challenges that may arise when using open-ended questions in adoption assessment interviews. The empirical data comprises recorded interviews analyzed using conversation analysis to examine how talk is structured in relation to institutional objectives. The findings indicate that pro-spective adoptive parents employ various communicative strategies to navigate the demands of open-ended questions, particularly when their suitability for parenthood is being evaluated. These strategies include seeking clarification, challenging implicit assumptions, and collaboratively addressing the complexity of the questions with the social worker. The study demonstrates how institutional goals influence the outcome of open-ended questions—an insight particularly relevant for professionals involved in assessment contexts. The ideal of open-ended questions becomes especially problematic in adoption assessments, where applicants are highly motivated to offer what they perceive as the “right” answers.

It is well known that the Swedish literary culture is open and that the most common overall translation strategy for high prestige fiction is adequate, in the Toury sense (2012 p. 70). But are there different degrees of adequacy? And do translators favor vernacular or cosmopolitan stances in their overall adequate translations? Are there any signs of commercial vernacular­ ism on the cover of the studied Caribbean novels translated from English, French and English/ Spanish? By employing the transformations reduction, substitution and retention, the results of the study show that retention is by far the most used transformation by the Swedish publishers and translators, concerning both the paratexts and translated texts. Commercial vernacularism is detectable on the covers. However, the strength of retention varies within the overall adequate translations; from an adequate translation conforming to Swedish expectancy norms for trans­ lated high prestige fiction, which is employed by the translator of the novel Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid, over a foreignizing translation strategy reminding the reader of the presence of the culturally Other, used by the translator of Maryse Condé’s novel Traversée de la mangrove, to the abusive fidelity translation challenging the tolerant Swedish reader’s expectancy norms and translation ethics reading the translation of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. The study shows that there are three nuances of adequacy in the studied material.

As a consequence of this, headlines on newspaper websites are often read without the reader considering the article they correspond to.Do these headlines faithfully reproduce quotes found in the corresponding article, or are they better thought of as clickbaits, containing sensational quotes that do not parallel those given in the article?In this paper, nearly 2,700 headlines from four of the largest Swedish newspapers are analysed to answer this question, as well as the question of how common quotes are in Swedish newspaper headlines.The analysis indicates that headlines with quotations are more common in Swedish newspapers than in previous studies of British, German and Spanish newspapers.Furthermore, a careful analysis of 312 headlines with quotes reveals that only one third of the headlines are verbatim in relation to the quote in the corresponding article.However, most changes are small and mainly concern the form of the quoted statement.When the meaning of the quote has been changed, it is often because hedging phrases have been removed, giving the statement a more drastic meaning than in the article.Headlines considered as clickbaits are nevertheless very few in the analysed material.Moreover, there are no major differences between the studied morning and evening papers in how accurately they reproduce quotes in headlines.