Analyzing the translations of Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) in terms of standardized PIL sections

The content of patient information leaflets PILs provides key health related issues for consumers Mistranslations of this essential information can therefore have significant health care consequences The present study thus attempted to evaluate the translations of medical patient information leaflets into Persian language to find out to what extent Persian translated leaflets of medications correspond to the source English texts in terms of standardized sections of PILs To this aim a corpus comprised of 30 English leaflets along with their Persian translations were purposively selected and analyzed in terms of the 8 standardized PIL sections defined by Food and Drug Administration introductory information naming category composition formulation mechanism of action indications contraindications and risks side effects storage administration and dosage precautions and ending A qualitative content analysis of the source texts and target texts revealed many instances of ellipsis made by the translators in the formulation 100percent mechanism of action 71percent composition 70percent precautions 30percent and ending 20percent sections of the leaflets Besides the omissions a 26percent of addition to content was found in the Persian translations of the drug storage information section