Translating Genetics Leaflets Into Languages Other Than English: Lessons From an Assessment of Urdu Materials

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Abstract

Although the formal focus of this article - the translation of educational leaflets for the parents of children suffering from diseases which have been genetically precipitated into Urdu - may seem, on the face of it, to be exceedingly narrow, the lessons which can be learned from it are of much wider applicability. The authors not only explore the difficulties of finding an appropriate vocabulary in which to represent human reproductive processes when the target audience operate within a very different conceptual universe from that which the original (English-speaking) target audience operate, but in doing so highlight the way in which efforts to achieve 'accurate' translation can have unexpected consequences. If translators have to resort to specialist dictionaries to identify what they hope are Urdu equivalents of technical terms in English, the likelihood of the target (popular) audience gaining an accurate appreciation of the ideas which the leaflet-writers intended to convey is remote.