NAATI CCL Punjabi health & medical dialogues

What health & medical dialogues actually test

Health is the single most common domain in the CCL test, and the one candidates most often assume they can handle because they have sat in a GP waiting room themselves. The difficulty is rarely the medicine. It is that a clinical segment stacks a diagnosis, a dose, a frequency, a duration and a condition into thirty-five words, and every one of them is a separate mark. A dropped "twice a day" or a "three weeks" that becomes "three months" is not a slip; in the room it would be a dosing error, and assessors mark it accordingly.

Where marks go in this domain

• Numbers that arrive in pairs — a dose and a frequency, an age and a duration — get merged into one figure.
• Conditional instructions lose their condition: "if the fever comes back, stop and ring us" becomes "ring us".
• Clinical terms get replaced with a family word that is close but not the same, so the register drops out of the consultation.

The 8 free health & medical dialogues

Each one sits inside a full two-dialogue paper, because that is how the real test presents them. Sit the paper to get a score out of 90; the transcript and model answers are open either way.

• GP Visit: A Child's Persistent Cough and an Asthma Diagnosisfoundation

  Mrs Sandhu has brought her seven-year-old daughter Jasleen back to a bulk-billing general practice in the western suburbs after three weeks of coughing. The GP, Dr Harding, has the chest X-ray and breathing test results and will explain the diagnosis, start a preventer and a spacer, make a hospital referral with a waiting time, and set out what the family will and will not pay. You are the interpreter.

  Mock test 1, dialogue 18 segmentspaired with Social & Community Services
• Emergency Department: Chest Pain and an Overnight Admissionintermediate

  A Punjabi-speaking man in his sixties has walked into the emergency department of a public hospital in Melbourne at about seven in the evening with chest pain and shortness of breath. You interpret first for the triage nurse, then for the emergency doctor, as the ECG and blood results come back and a decision is made about whether he goes home or stays.

  Mock test 2, dialogue 18 segmentspaired with Housing & Property
• Pharmacist Counselling on a New Antibiotic Scriptadvanced

  A Punjabi-speaking woman in her sixties brings a new prescription to a community pharmacy in Melbourne's west. She has been given a seven-day course of antibiotics for a dental infection, but she already takes warfarin for a heart valve. The pharmacist must explain the dose and timing, flag the interaction with her blood thinner, set out exactly when she should stop the medicine and ring for help, and explain why one item on the script costs far more than the other.

  Mock test 6, dialogue 28 segmentspaired with Legal & Tenancy
• Mental Health Treatment Plan at the GPadvanced

  Mr Jagdeep Dhaliwal, a 41-year-old warehouse worker in Craigieburn, has come back to his GP after five months of broken sleep, weight loss and low mood. Dr Nolan wants to prepare a Mental Health Treatment Plan so that Medicare will subsidise sessions with a psychologist. Mr Dhaliwal is worried about who will find out. You are the interpreter in the consulting room.

  Mock test 9, dialogue 18 segmentspaired with Small Business
• Diabetes Review: Starting Insulin and Avoiding Hyposadvanced

  Mrs Randhawa has had type 2 diabetes for six years and has come to her general practice for a scheduled diabetes review with the practice nurse. Her latest blood test is back and it is above target. The nurse will do the annual checks, start her on insulin, teach her what to do if her sugar drops, and talk about food. You are interpreting.

  Mock test 12, dialogue 28 segmentspaired with Legal & Tenancy
• Antenatal Check-Up: Iron, the Glucose Test and the Birth Planfoundation

  A Punjabi-speaking woman attends her routine antenatal appointment at a public hospital clinic in Sydney. The midwife confirms how far along she is, explains a low iron result and the glucose tolerance test she has been booked for, tells her when to ring the hospital about the baby's movements, and starts the birth plan discussion. You interpret for both of them.

  Mock test 14, dialogue 18 segmentspaired with Transport & Roads
• Dental Treatment Plan: Crown or Implantintermediate

  A dentist in a suburban practice is presenting a treatment plan to a Punjabi-speaking patient whose lower right molar has cracked. There are two very different paths, one that saves the tooth and one that replaces it, and they differ by thousands of dollars. The patient is on an extras policy with waiting periods still running and needs to weigh the private quote, her health fund limit, the public dental waiting list and what to do about the pain today.

  Mock test 16, dialogue 28 segmentspaired with Immigration & Settlement
• Immunisation Catch-Up at the Practice Nurse Clinicintermediate

  A practice nurse at a bulk-billing GP clinic in Craigieburn sees a Punjabi-speaking mother and her four-year-old daughter Jasleen, who moved from Ludhiana fourteen months ago. The Australian Immunisation Register shows two overdue doses. The nurse must set a catch-up schedule, explain how the Register feeds childcare enrolment and family payments, separate normal reactions from ones that need a doctor, give a paracetamol dose by weight, and obtain written consent.

  Mock test 19, dialogue 18 segmentspaired with Business & Employment

Health & Medical glossary — English to Punjabi (108 terms)

Every term the 8 dialogues above assume you can produce, merged and deduplicated, in Gurmukhi with transliteration. Learn these before you sit a health & medical paper and the segments stop being about vocabulary and start being about memory, which is what they were always testing.

More terms for this domain, with example sentences and audio, in the health & medical vocabulary bank.

Every health & medical pitfall in the library (64)

One examiner note per segment, from every health & medical dialogue we publish. Read straight through, the pattern in what this domain punishes becomes obvious in a way no single paper can show you.

1. Test 1, dialogue 1, segment 1 · Dr Harding

   Two different results are reported here and candidates fuse them, saying only that "the tests were fine". The X-ray being clear and the breathing test being abnormal point in opposite directions; losing that contrast loses the whole logic of the segment. "Mild" is also a scoreable qualifier, not decoration.

2. Test 1, dialogue 1, segment 2 · Mrs Sandhu

   ਸੱਸ is the husband's mother, and rendering it as "my mother" or a vague "someone at home" throws away a scoreable relationship the assessor is listening for. The exercise trigger is also often dropped because the honey sentence sits between it and the diagnosis.

3. Test 1, dialogue 1, segment 3 · Dr Harding

   The colour codes carry the whole instruction. Swapping brown and blue, or saying "two puffs a day" instead of two puffs morning and night, turns a correct rendering into a dangerous one and costs marks on both the number and the frequency. "Even on good days" is a separate unit again.

4. Test 1, dialogue 1, segment 4 · Mrs Sandhu

   Two questions are asked and candidates answer only the second. The growth worry is also softened into "she is a bit worried about the medicine", which strips the concrete belief the doctor then has to correct, so the next segment stops making sense.

5. Test 1, dialogue 1, segment 5 · Dr Harding

   "Without seeing me first" is an instruction with a condition attached; candidates flatten it to "do not stop it", which drops the review the doctor is building in. The ten weeks is also frequently converted to ten days, which is the single most expensive slip in this dialogue.

6. Test 1, dialogue 1, segment 6 · Mrs Sandhu

   "ਕੰਮ ਘੱਟ ਹੈ" means his hours have dropped, not that he is unemployed. Upgrading it to "my husband lost his job" is an addition, and CCL penalises added information as heavily as omitted information.

7. Test 1, dialogue 1, segment 7 · Dr Harding

   Three dollar figures in one breath, and the third is derived from the first two. Candidates who try to keep all three verbatim usually lose the middle one; the safe technique is to render the charge, the rebate, then the gap in the same order the doctor gave them, without recalculating.

8. Test 1, dialogue 1, segment 8 · Mrs Sandhu

   The decision and the two requests are three separate units. Candidates who lead with the requests often forget to state that she has chosen the public clinic, which is the resolution of the whole dialogue. Four weeks must not drift into the ten weeks mentioned earlier.

9. Test 2, dialogue 1, segment 1 · Triage nurse

   Candidates render three separate questions as one vague "tell me about your pain". When and what it feels like and where it spreads are three scoreable units, and "jaw" is the one most often dropped because ਜਬਾੜਾ is unfamiliar.

10. Test 2, dialogue 1, segment 2 · Mr Sandhu

    "ਭਾਰੀ ਦਬਾਅ" is pressure or heaviness, not a stabbing pain; calling it sharp changes the clinical picture and loses the mark. ਖੱਬੀ (left) must survive: "it goes to my arm" drops the side the doctor is asking about.

11. Test 2, dialogue 1, segment 3 · Triage nurse

    "Should aim to see you" is a target, and candidates upgrade it to a guarantee ("ਡਾਕਟਰ ਦਸ ਮਿੰਟਾਂ ਵਿੱਚ ਆਵੇਗਾ"). That is a hedge lost and a false promise made to a frightened patient, which assessors mark down twice.

12. Test 2, dialogue 1, segment 4 · Mr Sandhu

    The drug name is a proper noun and must be carried, not replaced by "a tablet for pressure". Note the two separate facts hidden in one clause: he takes it every morning AND he took it today. Assessors tick those separately.

13. Test 2, dialogue 1, segment 5 · Dr Nguyen

    "Does not show a heart attack" is not "you have not had a heart attack"; upgrading the negative finding to an all-clear is the single most costly error in this dialogue. The word troponin must be reproduced, not softened to "a special test".

14. Test 2, dialogue 1, segment 6 · Mr Sandhu

    The number is fifty eight, not sixty eight, and it belongs to the father, not the patient. Candidates also flatten the conditional into a flat request to go home, losing the "if the first test is normal" that the doctor answers in the next segment.

15. Test 2, dialogue 1, segment 7 · Dr Nguyen

    Two time facts sit in one clause: three hours later AND about eleven tonight. Candidates keep one and drop the other. The modal contrast at the end (may feel well, must not leave) is a single scoreable unit that collapses if you render both verbs as "can".

16. Test 2, dialogue 1, segment 8 · Mr Sandhu

    "ਪਬਲਿਕ ਮਰੀਜ਼" is the Australian admission category "public patient", not "a patient of the public". Two items are being brought, the medication list and the glasses, and candidates who hear only "ਦਵਾਈਆਂ" report that she is bringing his medicines instead.

17. Test 6, dialogue 2, segment 1 · Pharmacist

    Four numbers land in one breath: the strength, the tablet count, the frequency and the duration. Candidates merge 400 mg and three times a day into one figure. "With food or straight after it" is a timing instruction, not a general remark about eating, and "must finish" is an obligation.

18. Test 6, dialogue 2, segment 2 · Mrs Dhillon

    The reason she stopped early is a scoreable unit on its own, not decoration. Candidates also generalise ਦਿਲ ਦੇ ਵਾਲਵ into "heart problem", which removes the clinical reason she cannot simply drop the warfarin later in the dialogue.

19. Test 6, dialogue 2, segment 3 · Pharmacist

    The contrast at the end is the mark. "In three days, not at your usual monthly test" tells her to make an extra appointment; candidates render only the first half and she waits four weeks. INR should be kept as INR, with a short gloss such as ਖ਼ੂਨ ਪਤਲਾ ਹੋਣ ਦਾ ਟੈਸਟ.

20. Test 6, dialogue 2, segment 4 · Mrs Dhillon

    ਦੋ ਦਸ਼ਮਲਵ ਚਾਰ is a decimal and candidates deliver "twenty-four" or "two to four". Attribution also gets lost: the halving idea is the neighbour's, not the doctor's, and if the pharmacist does not hear that it came from a neighbour the safety warning that follows lands wrongly.

21. Test 6, dialogue 2, segment 5 · Pharmacist

    This is the segment the paper is built around. The "if" and the "then" sit six clauses apart, and candidates deliver the three symptoms as general advice without ever attaching the instruction to stop the antibiotic and phone. Note also must not versus may: the prohibition is on her, the permission belongs to the doctor.

22. Test 6, dialogue 2, segment 6 · Mrs Dhillon

    ਭਤੀਜਾ is the brother's son specifically, and candidates flatten it to "relative" and lose the occasion. The alcohol question is easy to render as a general query about drinking, but she is asking about one drink at a named event on a named day, and the pharmacist's answer depends on that.

23. Test 6, dialogue 2, segment 7 · Pharmacist

    The two prices are attached to two different items and two different funding routes, and candidates merge them into one figure or swap which item is subsidised. The alcohol rule is not "during the course" but until a day after the last tablet, which is a longer window than most candidates render.

24. Test 6, dialogue 2, segment 8 · Mrs Dhillon

    ਇੱਕੀ (twenty-one) is the seven days times three doses that the pharmacist never said aloud, and candidates who are not tracking the arithmetic hear it as ਇੱਕ and say "one tablet". Thursday is a named day and must not become "in a few days".

25. Test 9, dialogue 1, segment 1 · Dr Nolan

    Three separate symptoms are listed and candidates collapse them into one phrase like "ਤੁਸੀਂ ਠੀਕ ਨਹੀਂ ਹੋ", losing two scoreable units. "Mental Health Treatment Plan" is the name of a Medicare document; describing it as "ਦਿਮਾਗ ਦਾ ਇਲਾਜ" makes it sound like treatment rather than paperwork and the assessor marks the term down.

26. Test 9, dialogue 1, segment 2 · Mr Dhaliwal

    "ਤਿੰਨ ਵਜੇ" and "ਛੇ ਕਿੱਲੋ" sit two clauses apart and routinely get merged or swapped. The last clause is the emotional core of the whole dialogue; rendering it as "he is embarrassed" breaks first person and softens community judgement into private feeling, which is a distortion, not a paraphrase.

27. Test 9, dialogue 1, segment 3 · Dr Nolan

    This is the segment the may/must distinction is built on. Candidates render both modals with the same strength, so "I may not share" and "I must break" come out as one flat "ਮੈਂ ਨਹੀਂ ਦੱਸਾਂਗਾ". That loses the doctor's legal obligation entirely. "Written consent" reduced to "ਤੁਹਾਡੀ ਇਜਾਜ਼ਤ" drops the qualifier that makes it scoreable.

28. Test 9, dialogue 1, segment 4 · Mr Dhaliwal

    Candidates sanitise "ਪਾਗਲ" into "people with problems" to be polite. The stigma is exactly what the GP needs to hear, and softening it removes the information unit. It is also attributed to the community, not to himself; rendering it as his own belief reverses the speaker's position.

29. Test 9, dialogue 1, segment 5 · Dr Nolan

    Three numbers and a conditional in one segment. "Up to six" becomes a promise of six when candidates drop the cap, and the review turns into an optional extra instead of the condition that unlocks the next four. "Calendar year" is not the financial year, and rendering it as "ਵਿੱਤੀ ਸਾਲ" is a factual error.

30. Test 9, dialogue 1, segment 6 · Mr Dhaliwal

    "ਦਿਲ ਦੀ ਗੱਲ" is idiomatic; a literal "matter of the heart" sounds cardiac in a medical room and an assessor hears a false symptom. The causal link matters too: the hours were cut, therefore cost is a problem. Two unlinked statements lose the reasoning the GP is responding to.

31. Test 9, dialogue 1, segment 7 · Dr Nolan

    Three dollar figures in one breath, and the third is the difference between the first two. Candidates report the gap as the fee, or drop the rebate and leave the patient believing he pays $180. The two language options are alternatives, not a package; joining them with "ਅਤੇ" tells the patient he gets both.

32. Test 9, dialogue 1, segment 8 · Mr Dhaliwal

    The contrast between the wife and the rest of the family is the entire point of the segment, and a rushed "I will tell my family" reverses the patient's disclosure decision. An assessor treats that as a distortion, which costs more than a plain omission would.

33. Test 12, dialogue 2, segment 1 · Nurse Bennett

    Two numbers, one result and one target, sitting three clauses apart. Candidates who say "your sugar is high and we want it lower" lose both. The final contrast is also scoreable on its own: yearly instead of every two years is the change, and dropping "not every two years" removes the point of saying it.

34. Test 12, dialogue 2, segment 2 · Mrs Randhawa

    "Metformin" must survive as a drug name; candidates render it as ਸ਼ੂਗਰ ਦੀ ਗੋਲੀ and the nurse loses the only medication detail she has. The sister's belief must stay attributed to the sister, otherwise the patient sounds as though she is stating a medical fact.

35. Test 12, dialogue 2, segment 3 · Nurse Bennett

    The dose and the time are two facts, and "long acting" is a third that explains why the timing rule works. Candidates who say ਰਾਤ ਨੂੰ ਟੀਕਾ ਲਾਓ have given a vague instruction instead of ten units at nine, and the contrast between tablets and insulin, which is the whole reason a late dinner does not matter, disappears.

36. Test 12, dialogue 2, segment 4 · Mrs Randhawa

    "ਡਿੱਗਦੀ ਡਿੱਗਦੀ ਬਚੀ" means she almost fell, not that she fell. Candidates upgrade it to a collapse and hand the nurse a false clinical history. Being home alone is not filler either; it is the reason she is asking, and the hypo instructions that follow have to work for someone with nobody there to help.

37. Test 12, dialogue 2, segment 5 · Nurse Bennett

    Three numbers, all different: below four, fifteen grams, fifteen minutes. Candidates merge the two fifteens or attach the wrong unit to each. "You must" is again an instruction, not a suggestion, and the sequence take, wait, retest has to arrive in that order to be usable.

38. Test 12, dialogue 2, segment 6 · Mrs Randhawa

    Candidates helpfully convert roti to "bread", dal to "lentil soup" and mithaai to "dessert", which erases the actual diet the nurse needs to hear. Keep the food names. The husband's blanket instruction is reported speech and must not become the patient's own plan.

39. Test 12, dialogue 2, segment 7 · Nurse Bennett

    "No sugar in your chai" is absolute and "occasionally" is a limit; candidates swap them, producing less sugar in the tea and unrestricted mithaai. That single swap reverses the nurse's advice while sounding fluent, and the follow-up interval is often lost at the end of a long segment.

40. Test 12, dialogue 2, segment 8 · Mrs Randhawa

    A four-item read-back that candidates rush because it is repetition. Every item is still scoreable. ਸੰਗਰਾਂਦ should be kept as the name of the day with a brief gloss such as the first day of the Punjabi month; replacing it with "a religious day" loses a proper noun and hides why she is asking.

41. Test 14, dialogue 1, segment 1 · Midwife Doyle

    Twenty seven weeks and four weeks are two separate numbers sitting in the same segment, and candidates routinely keep one and lose the other. Dropping the due date entirely, or converting it into a vague "in October", costs a further mark because the day is scoreable on its own.

42. Test 14, dialogue 1, segment 2 · Mrs Sandhu

    Assessors listen for ਸੱਸ to come out as mother-in-law; candidates who say "my mother" or "my family" lose the relationship mark. The three symptoms are separately scoreable, so summarising them as "she feels weak" surrenders two of them.

43. Test 14, dialogue 1, segment 3 · Midwife Doyle

    One hundred and two and one hundred and ten are one clause apart and get swapped or merged. "Every second day" is the dosage detail assessors mark hardest here; rendering it as "daily" is a clinical error, not a wording preference.

44. Test 14, dialogue 1, segment 4 · Mrs Sandhu

    ਸ਼ੂਗਰ is the everyday Punjabi word for diabetes; rendering it literally as "sugar" in the father's sentence turns a family history of diabetes into nothing. The two closing questions are separate marks, and candidates who are running behind drop the second one.

45. Test 14, dialogue 1, segment 5 · Midwife Doyle

    The fasting instruction is the whole point of the segment and it has three parts: the cut-off time, the ban on food, and the water exception. Candidates who render only "do not eat before the test" lose all three, and "two more samples over two hours" collapses into a single "two".

46. Test 14, dialogue 1, segment 6 · Mrs Sandhu

    The timing ਕੱਲ੍ਹ ਸ਼ਾਮ (yesterday evening) is clinically important and is often flattened to "lately". Candidates also merge her two questions into one, so the room question never reaches the midwife and the segment loses half its marks.

47. Test 14, dialogue 1, segment 7 · Midwife Doyle

    "May stay" is permission and "must ring" is an instruction; candidates who use the same Punjabi construction for both make the hospital sound as though it is ordering two relatives into the room. Delivery suite is a proper unit name and should not become a generic hospital.

48. Test 14, dialogue 1, segment 8 · Mrs Sandhu

    Next Tuesday is a new piece of information appearing only in the closing segment, and tired candidates drop it. Note also that she asks for an interpreter as a service request; rendering it as "I will bring someone to translate" changes the meaning and loses the mark.

49. Test 16, dialogue 2, segment 1 · Dr Lombardi

    The tooth number is a proper identifier, not an approximation, and candidates who drop "forty six" leave the patient unable to check the quote. "Lower right" is also scoreable: reversing it to the left side changes which tooth is being treated. The two options must be delivered as two, joined by or, not blended into "we will fix the tooth".

50. Test 16, dialogue 2, segment 2 · Mrs Bains

    The trigger matters clinically: cold water, not heat, not pressure alone. Candidates summarise it as "my tooth hurts" and the dentist loses the sign that points to the nerve. Panadol is a brand name and stays in English; "every day" is a frequency the dentist needs before recommending a different painkiller.

51. Test 16, dialogue 2, segment 3 · Dr Lombardi

    Four dollar figures belong to two different plans, and the root canal is conditional on the nerve, not certain. Candidates who say the root canal ਕਰਨੀ ਪਵੇਗੀ without the ਜੇ turn a possibility into a bill. Note $5,200 is described as the whole implant path, while $1,450 and $1,500 are two separate charges that the patient must add herself.

52. Test 16, dialogue 2, segment 4 · Mrs Bains

    "Extras cover" is the specific product that pays for dental; rendering it as plain "insurance" or "Medicare" is wrong, since Medicare does not fund routine dental at all. Eight months is the fact that decides the waiting-period answer two segments later, so a vague "we joined recently" strands the dentist's reply.

53. Test 16, dialogue 2, segment 5 · Dr Lombardi

    Four item numbers, two per plan, and the pairing is the marked content. A candidate who lists all four in a row without saying which belongs to the crown and which to the implant hands the patient a useless list. Twelve months is the waiting period; four months is what remains of it. Those are not the same number and must not be swapped.

54. Test 16, dialogue 2, segment 6 · Mrs Bains

    The $1,500 annual limit is easily confused with the $1,500 crown fee from segment three; they are different things that happen to match, and the assessor is watching for a candidate who says the fund will cover the crown. It is her husband who holds the pension card, not her, and the concession follows the card holder.

55. Test 16, dialogue 2, segment 7 · Dr Lombardi

    The opening is a condition, not a fact: the subsidy depends on whether her husband's card covers her, and candidates who drop the "if" promise her an entitlement she may not have. The public option is also cheap but delivers the opposite treatment to the one she wants, so dropping "not crown" leaves her believing she can get a crown free after a wait. The dose is 400 milligrams and it goes with food; a dose without its condition is an incomplete instruction.

56. Test 16, dialogue 2, segment 8 · Mrs Bains

    This is the segment that proves whether the two paths stayed separate. "The crown numbers, not the implant ones" is a contrast, and candidates who render it as "send the numbers to the fund" wipe out the patient's entire decision. Temporary filling today and written quote are two distinct requests, both scoreable.

57. Test 19, dialogue 1, segment 1 · Nurse Hollings

    Candidates compress "the eighteen month and the four year doses" into "some needles are missing" and lose two separate marks. The consent instruction is also routinely downgraded from an obligation to a suggestion; the nurse says it must happen before they start, not that it would be nice.

58. Test 19, dialogue 1, segment 2 · Mrs Sandhu

    "ਬਹੁਤੇ ਟੀਕੇ" means most of them, not all of them; candidates who say "she had her vaccinations in India" delete the gap that the whole dialogue turns on. The missing page and the question about acceptance are two units, not one.

59. Test 19, dialogue 1, segment 3 · Nurse Hollings

    The reassurance and the schedule get merged, so "an extra dose is safe" disappears and the mother is left sounding as if repeat doses are a risk she has to accept. Two today plus one in four weeks is three numbers; assessors tick each one.

60. Test 19, dialogue 1, segment 4 · Mrs Sandhu

    The mother is quoting a friend, not stating the law. Candidates who drop "ਮੇਰੀ ਸਹੇਲੀ ਕਹਿੰਦੀ ਹੈ" turn hearsay into an assertion and lose the attribution mark, and the seventh of September is often heard as the seventeenth.

61. Test 19, dialogue 1, segment 5 · Nurse Hollings

    This segment answers the friend's rumour, so the conditional is load-bearing: the payment survives only because she is on an approved catch-up. Candidates who state "your payment is safe" without the condition give false reassurance, and "around nine hundred dollars" must stay hedged and stay annual.

62. Test 19, dialogue 1, segment 6 · Mrs Sandhu

    The weight is the input to the next segment's dose, so sixteen kilos has to survive intact; a candidate who says "she is small" or guesses fifteen has already broken the calculation the nurse is about to give. Two days of fever and a swollen arm are separate reactions.

63. Test 19, dialogue 1, segment 7 · Nurse Hollings

    A distorted dose is far worse here than a dropped one: saying two hundred and forty per kilo, or fifteen millilitres, converts safety advice into an overdose instruction, and assessors treat that as a serious accuracy failure rather than a missed detail. If you cannot hold the arithmetic, render both figures exactly as spoken and let them stand. The may/must contrast is also scored: paracetamol is optional, the phone call is not.

64. Test 19, dialogue 1, segment 8 · Mrs Sandhu

    This is a read-back, so every number has to match what was said earlier: the second of September is the mother's own conversion of "four weeks", and candidates who blur it back into "next month" lose a date the assessor is holding a tick box for. Note the condition on the dose, which is for fever, not routine.

Register and cultural mediation in health & medical dialogues

• The GP and the parent are strangers in a professional setting, so every ਤੂੰ in your rendering is a register error. Use ਤੁਸੀਂ in both directions, including when the doctor gives an instruction, because English imperatives sound blunter in Punjabi than they do in English.
• Bulk-billing has no equivalent in the Indian health system, where you pay the clinic and there is no rebate. A one-clause gloss such as ਯਾਨੀ ਸਰਕਾਰ ਸਿੱਧਾ ਡਾਕਟਰ ਨੂੰ ਦਿੰਦੀ ਹੈ is legitimate cultural mediation; replacing it with a made-up Punjabi term is not.
• Home remedies from an older relative are a normal part of these consultations, and the mother-in-law's honey is not something to edit out politely. Interpreters who soften it deprive the doctor of clinical information and lose a scoreable unit at the same time.
• Use ਤੁਸੀਂ throughout for both the nurse and the doctor speaking to a man in his sixties, and for him speaking back. Slipping into ਤੂੰ with an older patient reads as rude and costs register marks even when the information is complete.
• Medicare and the public-patient category have no Punjabi equivalent. Keep the English terms and, if the patient signals confusion, add the briefest gloss rather than inventing a Punjabi coinage the patient has never heard.
• Punjabi families commonly attend emergency in a group and a daughter or son often speaks for the patient. The interpreter renders only what is said and does not merge the family's account with the patient's own words.
• Advice from neighbours and relatives carries real weight in Punjabi families, and a patient repeating what a ਗੁਆਂਢਣ told her is not being difficult. The interpreter must preserve who said what, because the pharmacist's correction is aimed at the source of the advice as much as the advice itself.
• Alcohol is a sensitive subject for many Punjabi families and a client may raise it obliquely, as ਇੱਕ ਪੈੱਗ at a family function rather than as a question about drinking. Render the question as asked, without softening it or editorialising, and keep ਤੁਸੀਂ throughout.
• The PBS, the concession card and the Safety Net have no Punjabi equivalents and are routinely confused with Medicare. Keeping the English names and adding a one-clause gloss is what an assessor expects; inventing a Punjabi translation leaves the client unable to ask for the right thing at the counter.
• Mental illness carries heavy stigma in many Punjabi families, and ਪਾਗਲ is the word community members actually use. When the patient reports that stigma, render it at full strength in the first person. Softening it to "people misunderstand" protects nobody and deletes the very information the GP is trying to address.
• Punjabi has no settled everyday equivalent for counselling, therapy or psychologist. ਮਨੋਵਿਗਿਆਨੀ is correct but bookish, and ਸਲਾਹ-ਮਸ਼ਵਰਾ suggests advice rather than treatment. The workable strategy is to borrow the English term and attach one short functional phrase, for example "counselling, ਯਾਨੀ ਗੱਲਬਾਤ ਰਾਹੀਂ ਇਲਾਜ", and then use the borrowed word consistently.
• Keep ਤੁਸੀਂ throughout and let the patient's ਡਾਕਟਰ ਸਾਹਬ stand. The pull towards a reporting frame is strongest on emotionally loaded lines, so guard against "ਉਹ ਕਹਿ ਰਿਹਾ ਹੈ ਕਿ ਉਸ ਦਾ ਭਾਰ ਘਟ ਗਿਆ". First person is not a stylistic preference here; the assessor scores the shift itself.
• Dietary advice is where this dialogue is won or lost. Punjabi roti is already made from wholemeal atta, so the standard Australian line about switching to wholemeal is meaningless here; the levers the nurse actually pulls are the number of rotis, the quantity of ghee, and the sugar in the chai. Interpret what she says, not the generic advice you expect her to give.
• Do not substitute Australian foods for Punjabi ones. Turning roti into "bread", dal into "soup" or mithaai into "dessert" gives the nurse a false picture of the household and destroys the countable unit, two rotis instead of four, that makes her advice followable.
• Refusing food at a wedding or in the gurdwara langar carries real social cost, and mithaai is offered as blessing and hospitality rather than as a treat. The nurse's "fine occasionally" is a calibrated permission; hardening it into a ban or loosening it into approval both misrepresent her, and the patient will act on whichever version she hears.
• A mother-in-law offering a diagnosis is completely normal in Punjabi families, and her opinion is reported as evidence rather than gossip. Keep the attribution intact, because the midwife needs to know whose assessment she is hearing.
• The midwife addresses the patient with ਤੁਸੀਂ throughout, and the patient uses ਮੈਡਮ ਜੀ. Sliding into ਤੂੰ, even briefly, reads as a register failure to a CCL assessor and marks the interpreter as untrained.
• Australian antenatal care limits the number of support people in the birth room, which has no equivalent in the Indian hospital experience many families bring with them. State the limit plainly rather than softening it, since a family that turns up with five relatives will be turned away at the door.
• Private health cover has no equivalent in the Indian system most clients grew up with, so extras cover, annual limit and waiting period arrive as three unfamiliar ideas at once. The community solution is an English loanword inside a Punjabi frame, and that is what an assessor expects to hear.
• Punjabi speakers state large sums in hundreds rather than thousands: ਪੰਦਰਾਂ ਸੌ ਡਾਲਰ for fifteen hundred, ਬਵੰਜਾ ਸੌ for five thousand two hundred. Both forms are correct, but pick one convention and hold it for the whole dialogue so the patient can compare the quotes.
• The patient answers a question about her own care by invoking her husband's pension card, which is normal in Punjabi households where entitlements are treated as family assets. Interpret the reference exactly as given; do not tidy it into her own card.
• The nurse and the mother use ਤੁਸੀਂ throughout. Punjabi-speaking parents often address clinic staff as ਭੈਣ ਜੀ or ਡਾਕਟਰ ਸਾਹਬ; keep the respectful register the speaker used, but do not add honorifics into the English that were never spoken.
• Linking vaccination to money is an Australian policy invention with no equivalent back home. Parents from Punjab expect immunisation to be a health matter only, so the Register, the childcare rule and the Family Tax Benefit supplement need to be rendered as three distinct things rather than one vague 'government rule'.
• Overseas paper records from Indian clinics are common and are usually accepted after a GP assesses them. Interpreters should resist the urge to reassure the parent themselves; if the nurse hedges with 'a doctor has to assess', that hedge is part of the message and must survive.

Health & Medical interpreting questions

Do NAATI CCL medical dialogues use technical terminology?

They use the terminology a real patient would hear, which is not the same as textbook medical language. Expect words like referral, prescription, specialist, blood pressure, side effects, and the name of a common condition or medication — not surgical procedure names. What the test genuinely demands is that you can render those everyday clinical terms precisely and consistently, in both directions, without inventing a Punjabi word that does not exist or sliding into a vague description when the exact term escapes you.

How do I interpret medication names and dosages into Punjabi?

Medication names are proper nouns and stay in English — you say the drug name as the doctor said it. The dosage does not: numbers, units and timing all have to be produced in Punjabi, accurately, and this is where the marks actually go. "Two tablets twice a day for seven days with food" is five separate pieces of information. Candidates who practise nothing else in this domain should practise saying dose-and-frequency phrases aloud until they come out in one breath.

What happens if I do not know a medical word during the real test?

You do not stop, and you do not guess a word that sounds plausible. Give the closest accurate description of the thing itself and move on — an assessor takes fewer marks for a slightly clumsy but correct rendering than for a confident wrong term, and far fewer than for the silence while you hunt for it. What you must never do is skip the segment. Every fact you leave behind is a mark you have already lost, and the fluency penalty for a long pause is on top of that.

Other CCL domains

Free dialogues, glossaries and examiner notes for every domain the library covers.