Translating Journal Articles For Lay Audience: Factors And Translation Process

Factors for Translating Journal Articles for the Lay Audience

The paper reflects upon the process that is utilized for the translation of the research journal articles for the lay audience. It provides with the various factors that are considered for the process of translation. It focuses on the different mediums that help in translating through various processes. It states that it is significant for the scientist to translate the articles for providing convenience to the lay people by making use of lay summaries. Also, it defines the key concept of the critical reflection and the process that is utilized for the translation. It provides with the role of audiovisual material in the process of translation of the article. Thus the paper aims to provide an overall process used to translate an article.

Translating the journal articles for the lay audience is difficult for the scientists. For the scientist, the ability to translate the journal articles for the lay audience is significant. The journal articles are translated as the scientist has the habit of using specialized or jargon language that is difficult for the lay audience to understand. In order to translate the journal articles, I determined some of the factors for translating the journal article for the lay audience. The factors such as selectivity of the information and elimination of the distraction, specialized language and knowledge, expressing uncertainty and statistics and mixed audience are the factors for the translation of the journal articles. The factors are explained as follows:

It is believed that message effectiveness is better than message efficiency. Researchers generally found that always the research does not provide with concise bottom lines and valid solutions. With the help of collecting data, the scientific journal articles are written after months or years. The objective of the scientist is to present the information about a specific point and by using method it came to the particular point. The translators of the research must identify the newspapers compelling style like World Wide Web (WWW), electronic communication and the USA today that allows the customers to have a greater selectivity and provides information that is user-friendly. According to me, this factor is important as it identifies the trends and the glossy reports makers in the business world eliminate the complexities of accounting to information streamline. The analogies reinforce and repeat messages by the use of metaphors that distinguish between two different elements for the subset of metaphor, similes, and illustration. I undertook this factor as it splits the information into adaptable pieces that improve the readability and can be executed by the use of typographical devices, bullets, subheads, and graphics.

Use of Lay Summaries and Various Mediums for Effective Communication

For an effective lay communication, the specialized knowledge of the scientist is considered to be the hindrance. An effective lay communication needs the information based on the perspective of the subject and the knowledge of the audience. I consider this factor as it states the use of jargon language in the articles that is the factor for discouragement in lay communication. Most of the words are not written in simple terms as it uses a unique style of writing.

The scientist demonstrates the validity and expresses the uncertainties by the use of statistics which becomes difficult to translate in lay language for the lay audience. According to my opinion as most of the lay audience are not interested and have no knowledge about the statistics it becomes difficult to present the main points of the article in detail.

It is found that there is a mixture of a lay audience who are considered to be heterogeneous. For the peers, it is easy for the scientist to write as they could concentrate on the message. I determined this factor as it states that the lay audience varies as per different language, socio-economic background, professions, cultures, and age. This mixture helps me in gathering knowledge of how to translate the journal articles for the lay audience.

In order to translate the journal articles for the lay audience, I undertook guidance notes and guidelines as an educational medium. Most of the organizations provide guidance notes and guidelines that comprise of lay summaries. This guidelines provide the information based on structure and content and also about the language that should be used for the lay audience. I took the help of this medium as it provides me with the details, appropriate tone, and usage of active voice, spelling, and punctuation that must be included while translating.

Another medium that I utilized is the utilization of forms and templates that highly helped in writing for the heterogeneous lay audience. Most of the association states that there is a requirement of lay summaries that help in answering the queries of the lay audience related to the research. It helped me as gives the forms that consist of interesting questions for the the4 lay audience.

The medium that highly helped me in translating the articles is the use of publishers and journals. It is helpful as it possesses the lay versions of the publications. This strengthens my effort to present the lay summaries to the lay audience. It is required to focus on the extra evidence of the lay information to avail the effectiveness of the cost-benefit assessment and lay summaries. I acknowledged that a better lay version will be relevant for the translation of the journal article.

Role of Audiovisual Material in the Translation Process

Evaluating the effectiveness of the lay material guided me of how to translate the article for the lay people. I made the use of lay materials that helped me to differentiate between literacy skills and the readability level of the article. It is stated that the organizations must conduct easy-to-use feedback systems, interviews and surveys to gather information related to lay materials.

The key concepts of the critical reflection are to evaluate the process that I undertook in order to translate the journal article for the lay people. In the journal article, the use of jargon and specialized language make it difficult for the lay people to understand the concept of the article. Thus the scientist makes use of simple words so that to make the readers understand the concept in a better way. They determine various factors for the process of translation and focus towards its components. Also, the scientist makes use of different mediums to translate the articles as different mediums help in making the article easy to understand. In the process of translation, audiovisual material helped in translating the articles appropriately.

Audiovisual translation is usually a component of the verbal translation of the video. Its major characteristic is the components of verbal and nonverbal synchronization. While working with the product of audiovisual the translators not only works with the texts but also with the elements of the media art that are polyphonic. Hence they execute with atmosphere, image, sound effects, comments and dialogues of the video. While translating the articles the four major channels of information are taken into account. They are as follows:

1) Channel for verbal audio: songs, off-screen voices, dialogues;

2) Channel for nonverbal audio: off-screen sounds, sound effects, music;

3) Visual and verbal channel: inscriptions that appear on the screen, notes, signs, subtitles;

4) Channel for nonverbal visual: image on the screen.

In the process of translation of the article for the lay people, the audiovisual material helped in distinguishing between structures of the nonverbal and verbal components separately in the actual work and its translation. It is helpful for me as it describes the three major levels of the theory of synchronization they are, level of text function, level of synchronicity and level of text meaning. The description of the audio converts the visual picture into spoken language and visual information into words. I acknowledged that the audio description is considered to be the descriptive method that inserts the description and explanation of the information of the articles. The audiovisual translation comprises ten components that are divided into two wider subdivisions. Audiovisual translation helped me in translating the article as the last level of the text function perceived the original article by showing the structures of the original article. I utilized the voice-over translation that is considered to be the faithful translation that translated the messages in a simultaneous method.

Conclusion 

The paper evaluated the process that has been undertaking for translating a research journal article, particularly for the lay audience. It is observed that as the scientist uses specialized language in writing a journal article it becomes significant to translate the articles for the lay audience to understand the concept. It discussed the primary factors that are responsible for the process of translation. It stated that the translation is due to the heterogeneous audience of different groups of people. It aimed to focus on the utilization of different mediums for the process of translation. Also, it provided with the role of audiovisual material in the translation process.

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