Volume 07 Issue 01 January 2024
1Sonia Halimi, 2Ahmed Hamada
1Professor and head of the Arabic unit at the Faculty of translation and interpreting (FTI). Her research fields and publications encompass legal translation, health communication, natural language processing with Arabic and teaching translation.
2freelance translator since he graduated from the FTI in 2019. He is commonly involved in the translation of medical material.
DOI : https://doi.org/10.47191/ijsshr/v7-i01-51Google Scholar Download Pdf
ABSTRACT
This paper aims to present the marketing and translation process of patient information leaflets (PILs) into Arabic and their accessibility to the public, taking the Algerian market as a case study. PILs are the main source of information related to medication and are required to be lay-friendly as part of the process of marketing authorization. Lay-friendliness in the Algerian context means that the information contained in the PILS, (1) is conveyed through the receiver language, i.e., Arabic, and (2) is written in a language that is understandable by the receiver. To test these hypotheses, an assessment of the regulatory framework of PILS in the Algerian context was carried out. Furthermore, a study was conducted based on 1) a questionnaire targeting 56 participants to assess the readability of PILS, and 2) a field survey in pharmaceutical laboratories to document the translation stage in the marketing process. The assessment showed that the use of Arabic is mandatory in addition to a foreign language. The questionnaire showed that participants tend to read the Arabic content of the PIL. The survey’s results reported that the translation task is delegated to a sworn translator’s office though the examination of 16 randomly-selected (out of 72 PILs) revealed some linguistic discrepancies.
KEYWORDS:patient leaflet information; drug packaging; package leaflet; medicine labelling; EU guidelines
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