CIVIL SERVICES PRELIMS EXAM: TRANSLATION ERRORS FOUND

With reference to the recently concluded Civil Services Preliminary Exam-2020, Niranjan Kumar, Professor at the Central Department of Hindi, University of Delhi and Director of ‘PragyanamIndica’, wrote to the UPSC Chairman, seeking redressal to various problems regarding the translation-related discrepancies in the Hindi language version of the question papers. It must be noted that in the Civil Services Preliminary Examination held this year, Hindi translation of “Civil Disobedience Movement” in General Studies Paper-I was given as “Asahyog Andolan” that actually in English is Non-Cooperation Movement. Besides, many times the translated language used in Hindi version was so misleading that it was very difficult for the students to understand the meaning conveyed by the questions. Professor Niranjan Kumar said, “Familiar and comprehensible words should be selected in the examinations so that the examinees do not have to grapple with the language unnecessarily. If there are translation errors in the examination causing problems for the candidates then it is an injustice to them.”