Purpose: Producing translated materials that are useful to (limited English proficiency) LEP patients requires a detailed understanding of both the environment in which texts are used and the industry culture embedded in the way health information is conveyed. This guide provides step-by-step instructions for developing a translation briefo orient translators to a source text and provide them with project specifications and established quality criteria to assess the resulting translation product

PHOTO CAPTION: Translations in health care settings often fall short in conveying the full intended meaning of the original English (source) text.

Need: Health care materials available in the languages spoken by patients are not only legally required by Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and many state laws, but they are also considered essential for safe and high-quality health care. Aside from translator skill, translation quality is dependent on the requester, who must be willing to partner with translators and understand that translation is more than replacing English words with equivalent target language words. Requesters can improve translation quality by learning to prepare translation briefs.

This tool, as part of the Hablamos Juntos More Than Words Toolkit Series, builds upon the available literature and our research on translation quality to help requesters prepare instructions to guide the work of translators. This framework suggests that the aim of translations should be the creation of texts that target language readers can understand and act upon in the same way the source audience responds to the source text (Nida, 1964; Carroll, 1966; Taber, 1969). This means treating source texts as linguistic units that are more than the mere words on a page; how they are used and the context in which they are used help convey intended meaning. Source texts also convey meaning through culturally-bound references and writing conventions aligned with source-reader knowledge and expectations; a fundamental reason creating word-for-word equivalent text in two languages is difficult to achieve. The translation brief enables requesters to permit translators to create target language content that approximates the intended meaning of an original text in a way that target language readers can understand and use. 

 

          

Translation: A Shared Responsibility Introducing the Translation Brief: A Practical Tool for Improving Translations

The translation brief, also referred to as translation instructions (Nord, 1991b), is a set of instructions prepared by a requester that accompanies a translation assignment, thus enabling the requester to convey information about the source text, the specific communicative purpose and context in which the text is used, the intended uses of the translation and what it aims to accomplish. In short, it enables the requester and translator to be, quite literally, on the same page from start to finish.