Abstract:
This study focuses on public awareness sensitization on HIV/AIDS via bilingual translation.
Two major languages, notably, English and French have been used. The study seeks to bring
to the fore the importance of translation as a discipline of study in educating the francophone
citizens on the precautions to be taken to prevent the contraction of HIV/AIDS and its
relevance to everyday life. It further outlines the challenges and difficulties in both the source
and the target languages. The translation seeks to equip the Francophones to engage in their
natural conjugal activities without contracting HIV/AIDS. Though documents written in the
French language and dealing with HIV/AIDS are available to the target population, the
relevance of this translated document is premium since it is a special AIDS/HIV education
workplace policy organized and documented by State Insurance Company-(Ghana), Ghana
Aids Commission and the Ministry of Health-Ghana with the support of World Health
Organization(WHO), ODA(British Aid),West Africa Project to combat AIDS (CIDA), USAID
and European Union(EU) to print this brochure. The document provides answers to most
common questions about HIV and AIDS in simple language that most people will understand.
It is as well the objective of the translation to educate them to avoid contact with infected
blood, to protect them from HIV/AIDS. In addition, the translation seeks to educate them
about how to live with people who have HIV/AIDS and to go about their daily chores without
contracting the virus or the disease. The study, however, underlines the fact that being
bilingual does not make a person a translator since the art of translation involves more than
just the possession of two languages. It further indicates that apart from the possession of at
least two languages, one must also be conversant with the techniques and the procedures
used in the art of translation.[Seleskovitch et Lederer(1984)] Techniques used in translating
are several, among which are; Modulation, Transposition, Emprunt, Reduction, Expansion
and Equivalence. For this particular study, the techniques of Expansion,Modulation,
Réduction and Transposition.The study eventually educates and conscientizes its publics in
four fundamental ways as follow:
That everybody stands the risk of being infected with AIDS/HIV
One should be faithful to only one partner to avoid contracting the AIDS virus,
HIV.
One should make use of condoms each time he engages in sexual intercourse so
as to minimize the risk of becoming HIV positive.
Open and frank discussion of the topic HIV/AIDS should be encouraged. At the
same time, friends, family members and members of the community should be
advised to protect themselves each time they have sexual intercourse.
