Hi Fabio,

In my case, I use Behling and Law's (2000) technique. You need to appoint three translators with excellent proficiency in both languages you are using.

The first translator needs to translate the original version into the target language. The second translator back-translates the translated version into original language. The third translator compares the original and back-translated versions and prepares the final draft (expect minor modifications).

Ref:

Behling, O., & Law, K. S. (2000). Translating questionnaires and other research instruments: Problems and solutions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Besides, you might also use Brislin’s classic back-translation model (1970) or Jones et al.'s (2001) translation technique.

Ref:

Brislin R.W. (1970) Back-translation for cross-cultural research. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 1, 185–216

Jones P.S., Lee J.W., Pillips L.R., Zhang X.E., & Jaceldo K.B. (2001)An adaptation of Brislin’s translation model for cross-cultural research. Nursing Research, 50, 300–304.

Hope this helps.

Aliff

Check this paper out. Article Psychometric Evaluation of the Brunei-Malay SF-36 version 2 ...

Dear Fabio Purro

To fulfil this object, Usunier (1998) addressed four types of translation techniques: direct translation, back translation, parallel translation, and mixed techniques. The researcher’s mother tongue as the source or the target language or being a bilingual would influence suitability of each technique.

Good luck

Usunier, Jean-Claude (1998) International & cross-cultural management research. London: Sage Publication.

Hello Fabio,

I suspect that there are many ways of going about translations. Earlier this year, a colleague and I needed to translate two surveys from English to Chinese. His native language is Chinese, mine is English.

Initially, he and a Chinese friend (both of whom have English as a second language) translated the surveys into Chinese. Then we had two native Chinese speakers (one of whom had lived in America for some time, the other a teacher of English in China) comment on the adequacy of the translations. Emails went backwards and forwards between those two people, and then between them and my Chinese colleague to try to resolve problems, including nuances of particular words, whether the nature of different contexts was being taken into account, and so on, until agreement was reached about the Chinese translations.

Then someone new, a Chinese person who was proficient in English, back translated the Chinese version to English, and I checked that back translation against the original English, and we needed to sort out one minor residual problem.

So, it was complicated. The main thing that impressed me through all of this was that translation is not a simple matter. The textbook procedures might, on occasions, be too simplistic, and there might be different ways of going about things in order to achieve a desirable outcome.

All the best with your research.

Robt.

Easiest and most assured way maybe is to do back translations. Two completely different translators, one for the local language and another back to English or original language. Hope this helps!

I agree with Judith Punzalan. The best way to translate is to get the survey translated by a native speaker who has good knowledge of both the languages and then get it back translated by a similarly knowledgeable bilingual. Match the back translation with the original and you know whether the translations have included all the nuances.

The translation and validation of a questionnaire are two separate processes and require different techniques. Questionnaire validation can be done through cognitive interviewing and other methods.

I have directed the translation of conversation guides and questionnaires in 40 or 50 languages, I would guess, in more than 20 countries in Africa plus Bangladesh and Brazil, and so have tried many ways. The ultimate goal of translation of a questionnaire is to formulate questions in ordinary and everyday language so that the respondents understand easily and are not puzzled. In my experience, professional translators and journalists tend to provide questions that are too formal; they may be correct, but people do not speak in such terms. I have also found that even if the group of interviewers agrees with how questions are formulated—the questions have been translated correctly from English or French or Portuguese—when you do role plays as part of the training, whi is indispensable, people find many changes they want to make, for they will say: “people just don’t talk like that.” Of course you will also need to revise questions after pretesting.

You might be interested in reading a technical report I wrote for the Demographic and Health Survey group called Problems in understanding questions in an AIDS Indicator Survey in Swahili in Tanzania, 2004. You can find it on the DHS web site or in my publications on Research Gate.

I think that Paul, above, makes some important and insightful points. Translation can appear, at first, to be a simple matter, but in reality it often turns out not to be easy if it is to take into account things such as idiom, nuances, and cultural appropriateness. In my experience, those things might not be sufficiently taken into account if only one person does the translating, then another does the back translating. Two or more people can sometimes raise issues that a single translator didn't think of.

Paul also makes a good point about translation and validation being different things. One problem is that the word validation has a number of meanings, so without knowing which of those meanings is intended in Fabio's original question, it is difficult to know how to begin providing answers. Maybe, Fabio, your question has been adequately answered, however.

I would add to what Stan Yoder points out about the way people talk. We did some qualitative research in Mali together. What we experienced was a translation during training of interviewers. Most of the time interviewers were from different "social environment". This gives us the opportunity to hear different ways of speaking and of course different suggestions during tranlation exercise. The goal was to translate/formulate our questions with words people was abble to understand without effort. We tried our best to use daily and common words with which people understand exactely what we were talking about and get nuances within the questions. This guarantee what is called in French "Le rendu de la question". The way to ensure that your questions works well is the step of the pretest. It will give you a chance to know is your wording (formulation in French) is correct or not and the best wording you tried during the pretest people gets easily. The process take a bit of time but help you get questionnaires with good quality of translation.

There are many guidelines available for translation and adaptation of a questionnaire from its original language (usually English) to a target language (your country national language). Examples include:

(1)Beaton, D. E., Bombardier, C., Guillemin, F. & Ferraz, M. B. (2000). Guidelines for the Process of Cross-Cultural Adaptation of Self-Report Measures. Spine, 25(24), 3186-3191.

(2) Guillemin, F., Bombardier, C. & Beaton, D. (1993). Cross-cultural adaptation of health-related quality of life measures: literature review and proposed guidelines. J Clin Epidemiol, 46(12), 1417-1432.

Both are the most cited papers for translation and adaptation of scales to another language. Generally, for adaptation, you need to carry out forward translations (at least two), synthesis of forward translations into one common translations by an expert committee (consist of translators and expert of the fields), back translation of the common translation to original language (English), expert committee review to finalize the translation, pre-testing of the translated version of scale, another expert committee meeting to finalize the scale, and lastly validation of the scale of its reliability and validity.

The following references might also be helpful:

Peña, E. D. (2007). Lost in translation: Methodological considerations in cross-cultural research. Child Development, 78, 1255–1264. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01064.x

Wild, D., Grove, A., Martin, M., Eremenco, S., McElroy, S., Verjee-Lorenz, A., & Erikson, P. (2005). Principles of good practice for the translation and cultural adaptation process for patient-reported outcomes (PRO) measures: Report of the ISPOR Task Force for translation and cultural adaptation. Value in Health, 8, 94–104. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1524-4733.2005.04054.x