After many hours of research, discussion, and lab work, the team was ready to share some of our project's scientific processes with our community. For this, we decided to translate educational materials from English to Spanish (the most spoken language in our city). This is because we believe translation is key to connecting knowledge and guaranteeing access to a broader audience.
Students are not commonly exposed to materials related to synthetic biology. However, when they are, scientific language and terminology are very difficult to understand. Therefore, translating the materials to the student's native language (Spanish) would simplify the understanding of complex keywords and hence of a topic, synthetic biology.
Our team produced several translations of videos, texts, and documents regarding the basics of synthetic biology and the scientific method. Our audience, students, need a solid base of scientific processes to understand an introduction to synthetic biology better. The educational materials were published on our school's official websites, Hiram Bingham School and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, being accessible for middle school and high school students.
Moreover, our collaboration with the IISc-Bengaluru team consisted of educational collaboration. The IISc-Bengaluru team kindly shared their educational material covering the basics of synthetic biology. Several of our team members translated the texts from English to Spanish and shared the contents with our community. Once the material was published on our school's websites, students could easily reach us through contact emails and, even so, share any questions, comments, or concerns in person, as we attend the same school.
Finally, translation was a daunting experience as some words cannot be directly translated into Spanish. However, our team tried its best to maintain the initial message by looking for accurate definitions and synonyms in reliable sources.
