Huang 1

Tony Huang
Mr. Wilson
Writing 2
22 March 2017
Portfolio WP3
The topic of my writing project is breast cancer awareness. The academic source that I

will be using is Surabhi Sharmas Breast Cancer Awareness and Prevention Behavior

Among Women of Delhi, India: Identifying Barriers to Early Detection. and I will be translating

it into an interior bus advertisement. The article discusses the issues of breast cancer awareness

in India to be social stigma, lack of familial support, and ambivalence in prioritizing one's own

health. The article is meant for organizations who are trying to create a more effective way of

creating awareness for breast cancer. The advertisement that I made attempted tackle the issues

of breast cancer awareness addressed in the academic journal. Every minute, someone around the

world dies from breast cancer. One of the best prevention of the negative effects of breast cancer

is early detection. A friend of mine recently developed a breast tumor, and if it were not for

taking action early, she would have ended up in a much worse situation. Hopefully by making

this translation, mothers will go seek help and the overall death rate of breast cancer will be

lowered. Bus advertisements are usually not in-depth due to their size and nature. With this in

mind, I had to decide what information from the article was important and to only include the

main points into my advertisement.

The new audience of my translation are low-income mothers who use public

transportation in countries like India that have these cultural stigmas against breast cancer. In the

abstract, the author stated, Lack of [breast cancer] awareness was prevalent, especially in low

socioeconomic class,(147) so I found it appropriate to translate the information from the journal

into a bus advertisement, where mothers under this category would see it. In contrast, the

audience of the academic journal are organizations who are trying to create awareness for breast
 Huang 2

cancer. By pretending that I was the organization reading the academic journal, I applied the

findings of the study in attempt to make an advertisement that would effectively raise awareness

compared to others that do not account for the barriers addressed in the article.

Since I was limited on how much information I could use, I only focused on certain parts

of the academic article. The parts I focused on were the abstract, the discussion, and the

conclusion. By using Karen Rosenbergs advice in Reading Games on navigating through

scholarly sources, I was able to get the gist of the article by looking at these three parts rather

than the whole thing. The information about the barriers of breast cancer awareness that I took

account of during the creation of my translation were the ambivalence toward prioritizing

[their] own health. lack of family support, fear of social stigma [and] losing femininity

(154-155). To address these issues in my translation, I put in big-text, Mothers, breast cancer is

normal. Your health is just as important as your family. Prioritize your own health before it is too

late. I try to comfort the reader so that they are less fearful of the social stigma by telling them

that it is normal. I try address the issue of mothers not worrying about their own health because

of their concern of their childrens health by reminding them that their health is just as important.

Along with the big message are pictures that relate to the advertisement and captures the

reader's attention. This gives the audience a visual to complement the textual message that the

advertisement is giving. In my translation, I drew different colors of women to further show the

normality of breast cancer by implying that it is international. After the big message, there is

smaller text that further explains the goal of the advertisement. Having caught the reader's

attention, advertisers take advantage of this and go into more detail about what they want to say.

In this part, I try to further counteract the common issues of awareness campaigns had that were

explained in the academic journal. One way I attempted do this was by debunking the social
 Huang 3

stigma and writing, All of the myths and misconception you hear about [breast cancer] are

wrong. I also tried to reassure the reader by saying, It is okay to be afraid but your health is

important, in hopes of helping them realize that being scared should not get in the way of

getting better. One of the biggest problems highlighted in the article were that mothers did not

pay attention to their own health because they put their family first, so in my advertisement I

said, your health is important, especially if you want to take care of your family, giving them

more reason to take care of themselves.

Although I understood the conventions of interior bus advertisements and successfully

addressed the issues of the peer reviewed journal and relayed it on an advertisement, I felt that

my translation was unsuccessful. This shows me that although you can understand the

conventions of a genre, it does not mean that you can do it yourself. This is analogous to writing

where you learn about all of the aspects like audience, rhetoric, and flow, but can still find it

difficult to write an essay. My translation was hindered because of my artistic incapability, which

harshly diminished the effectiveness of my advertisement. From this project, I learned that even

if you understand genres and how they work, it does not mean that you are able to just translate

any one genre to another.

 Huang 4

Works Cited

Sharma, Surabhi, Subhojit Dey, Arti Mishra, Suneeta Krishnan, Jyotsna Govil, and Preet

Dhillon. "Breast Cancer Awareness and Prevention Behavior Among Women of Delhi,

India: Identifying Barriers to Early Detection." Breast Cancer: Basic and Clinical

Research (2016): 147-55. Web.