A non-governmental organisation, Tech4All, has complained of errors in the Tamil version of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) paper.
The NGO’s founder trustee G.B. Ram Prakash has listed 66 errors in all.
According to him, there were 10 errors in Physics, six in Chemistry and 37 in the Biology section. These errors should result in 196 grace marks being awarded to the students, he said.
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Around 24,000 students took the test in Tamil this year. While some of the errors appear to be careless spelling mistakes others are of more serious nature.
Several technical words have been translated crudely, making them incomprehensible, he charged.
Some technical words are transliterations though there are equivalent Tamil words for them.
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The word ureter is known as siruneernaalam in Tamil but it has been retained as ureter.
In Tamil, cheetah is known as chiruthai , bat is vauvaal ; similarly a single cell is known as ore anu . The Tamil question paper has not translated cheetah. Also, the single cell has been translated as otrai anu and vauvaal appears as vavlaval , he charged further.
The NGO has been conducting free coaching classes for around 3,300 students for NEET. Its mobile app was recommended by the School Education department for NEET coaching.
Translation of textbooks
The basis for NEET is the NCERT textbook. But there is no Tamil version of the books.
Last year when the issue cropped up, the organisation had sought the Tamil translation of NCERT textbooks to avoid discrepancies in the translation of commonly-used technical words.
“Almost 46% of the students are from Tamil medium and we had raised the issue of the lack of Tamil versions of NCERT textbooks with the School Education Department last month,” the NGO said.