Article type
Year
Abstract
Background:
Billions of people living in low- and middle-income countries speak native languages other than English. Limited availability of Cochrane Reviews in languages other than English can undermine its potential to reach populations with the highest disease burden that need (evidence-based) quality health care. Tamil is a language spoken by about 70 million people around the world and is the official language of five Asian countries including India. Hence, there is a need to translate Cochrane summaries into Tamil.
Methods:
A team of five physiotherapists and two non-medical people with Tamil as their first language formed to translate Cochrane summaries. In the first step, three Cochrane summaries including the Abstract and the Plain language summaries related to physiotherapy were selected and independently translated by two physiotherapists of the team. In the second step, all the team members reviewed the translated material and the final version was prepared by consensus. In the third step, the final version of the translated summaries was presented to the potential target audience: native Tamil-speaking physicians, physiotherapists, patients and caregivers. They were asked to provide feedback on clarity and comprehensibility of the summaries. To facilitate easy understanding of the translation, we also prepared a glossary of common terminologies used in Cochrane Plain language summaries.
Results:
In general, participants provided positive feedback and perceived all the translated Tamil summaries as simple and easily understandable. Having a glossary was considered helpful for reading the summaries. The review team considered, translation of a few English nouns such as 'treadmill' into Tamil to be a potential source of confusion and misunderstanding. Hence we decided to use the English word within the bracket along with the Tamil translated word.
Conclusion:
Translation of Cochrane Plain language summaries into Tamil is feasible and can be valuable. It can help Cochrane efforts to disseminate high quality, relevant and up-to-date synthesized research evidence to more than 70 million people around the world.
Billions of people living in low- and middle-income countries speak native languages other than English. Limited availability of Cochrane Reviews in languages other than English can undermine its potential to reach populations with the highest disease burden that need (evidence-based) quality health care. Tamil is a language spoken by about 70 million people around the world and is the official language of five Asian countries including India. Hence, there is a need to translate Cochrane summaries into Tamil.
Methods:
A team of five physiotherapists and two non-medical people with Tamil as their first language formed to translate Cochrane summaries. In the first step, three Cochrane summaries including the Abstract and the Plain language summaries related to physiotherapy were selected and independently translated by two physiotherapists of the team. In the second step, all the team members reviewed the translated material and the final version was prepared by consensus. In the third step, the final version of the translated summaries was presented to the potential target audience: native Tamil-speaking physicians, physiotherapists, patients and caregivers. They were asked to provide feedback on clarity and comprehensibility of the summaries. To facilitate easy understanding of the translation, we also prepared a glossary of common terminologies used in Cochrane Plain language summaries.
Results:
In general, participants provided positive feedback and perceived all the translated Tamil summaries as simple and easily understandable. Having a glossary was considered helpful for reading the summaries. The review team considered, translation of a few English nouns such as 'treadmill' into Tamil to be a potential source of confusion and misunderstanding. Hence we decided to use the English word within the bracket along with the Tamil translated word.
Conclusion:
Translation of Cochrane Plain language summaries into Tamil is feasible and can be valuable. It can help Cochrane efforts to disseminate high quality, relevant and up-to-date synthesized research evidence to more than 70 million people around the world.