Economics jargon promotes a deficit in understanding
ere’s a riddle. I’m a translator, but I only know one language. I can’t talk in my Welsh Mam’s mother tongue and my Francophonic floundering leaves my friends in fits of giggles. I did German GCSE, but plonk me in the middle of Prussia and I’m not certain that asking the way to the nearest Italian restaurant would be enough to keep me out of trouble. I can only speak one language and it’s English.
I call myself a translator because, thanks to five and a bit misguided years doing two biochemistry degrees, I can change things like this:
“p53-p66shc/miR-21-Sod2 signalling is critical for the inhibitory effect of betulinic acid on hepatocellular carcinoma”
into things like this:
“A chemical called betulinic acid can slow down the growth of liver cancer cells, but it’s only effective when a gene called p53 is fully functional.”
It’s now my job to do this every day – to transform scientific language from gibberish and gobbledegook into something more digestible. When I’m feeling particularly puffed up, I think of myself as Hermes, passing messages down to Earth from the gods of science. And while the day-to-day office reality is certainly less grand, I hope that my efforts mean that people can appreciate some of the divine wonder of scientific research without having to spend their youth in dimly lit laboratories and libraries.
