49 translation errors in NEET Tamil question paper: NGO

Chennai: Translation errors in 49 of the 180 questions in NEET’s Tamil medium paper pointed at by an NGO- Teach for all, reflects the sad state of affairs. Teach for all is an NGO which held classes for NEET entrance for students below the poverty line in the state.

Representatives of the NGO pointed the question errors at a press conference organised last week in the Tamil question paper of the NEET exam held on May 6.

Giving an example of one they said that the Tamil translation of cheetah is ‘siruthai’, which had been printed as ‘seetha’ in the question paper (question no. 75).

Another error pointed at in the word ‘multiple allele’ (a technical word in biology) in question number 77, which was printed as ‘pala kutu allelgal’. They said the same should have been ‘pal kootu’.

The NGO representative said that similar errors had occurred in 47 other questions and the CBSE ought to grant grace marks for all these questions, said Teach For All founder G B Ram Prakash. “This means, every candidate who took up the test in Tamil should get 196 points as grace marks,” he told TOI.

According to him, the reason for these errors lay in no books being available with the NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) in Tamil and the failure on its part to standardize technical words in Tamil.

Last year, different question papers were given to English and Tamil candidates and the CBSE had assured the Supreme Court that the error would not be repeated again.

The English version is supposed to be considered as the final in cases of ambiguity in the tamil questions declares a disclaimer on page one in Tamil of the regional language question paper.

“It’s okay to ask the students to refer to the English version of the questions in case of one or two errors. Students will not be able to find enough time to go through both, English and Tamil versions for 49 questions,” he added.

Around 24,000 students Sat for the NEET UG in Tamil this year reports TOI.

In an earlier story done by Medical Dialogues team, it was reported that the sudden fall observed in the number of aspirants that took the medical entrance test in regional languages this year, as compared to the last, had the government pondering over on the regional language issue for NEET. It is rethinking over the number of regional languages that aspirants can give the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) in, as the medium of instruction later, is to be English.

Read Also: CBSE to rethink NEET in regional languages