Cross-cultural translation production process
One area in which cultural appropriateness and cross-cultural adaptation are required is the area of internationally used surveys (on health), questionnaires, psychological and personality tests, etc.
Let me take a real-world example.
In one type of personality assessment test, respondents are presented with a list of adjectives and asked to decide to what extent each adjective describes their personality. What happens when you need to translate the English (EN) adjective "awkward" into Dutch (NE)? "Awkward" (EN) can be translated as (NE) onhandig, lomp, onbehouwen, onaangenaam, penibel, ongemakkelijk, oncomfortabel, etc. Which Dutch equivalent are you going to choose? Are you going to choose an adjective that describes behaviour (onhandig, lomp ...) or maybe an adjective that describes a situation (penibel)? Are you going to rely on word frequency? How can you make sure that Dutch and English-speaking respondents are presented with equivalent tests?
Well, let us have a look at the translation production and cross-cultural adaptation process. The production process can be broken up into a cross-language and a cross-cultural process: translation on the one hand, cross-cultural adaptation on the other.
- Step 1: Validation of translatability and cultural adaptability (content, format, response scales, instructions, etc.), identification of potential difficulties, defining the subsequent production process
- Step 2: Selection of translators (different genders, educational backgrounds, etc.)
- Step 3: translation (multiple) (forward)
- Step 4: backward translation
- Step 5: comparison of source text, forward and backward translations
- Step 6: panel discussions, pilot testing and cross-cultural evaluation, including the evaluation of format, content, introduction, instructions, scoring system, literacy requirements, difficulty, gender, age, response styles, psychometric analyses to evaluate the equivalence of scales and overall equivalence.
- Step 7: Debriefing and reconciliation
The above is merely an outline of the major steps in the production process. This may look like an extremely complicated and costly process. But the good news is that many translatability problems can be anticipated.
Re-writing an original in a culturally 'controlled language', in an effort to make the original more easily translatable into several languages and culturally adaptable to several cultures, may produce very positive effects on your project timing and the cost-effectiveness of the subsequent production processes as well as contribute significantly to overall equivalence between original and translation, particularly in terms of cross-cultural measurability and validation of survey outcomes.