Illiterate individuals with aphasia comprise a unique and little studied population. Researchers have demonstrated substantial differences in performance of literate and illiterate individuals on linguistic tests (Lecours, Mehler, Parente, & Caldeira, 1987, 1988) and have suggested that diagnostic tools need to be modified for this population. However, there remains a dearth of appropriate language assessment tools for use with these people.

The primary focus of this study was to translate the CADL-2 (Holland, Frattali, & Fromm, 1998) into Hindi and modify it for use with illiterate aphasic persons residing in India. Preliminary data are presented from fifteen individuals, highlighting the effects of cultural and linguistic variables on test performance. Clinical implications of these data are discussed.