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Translation and Standardization Project Director: Guidelines For Developing Translations

The document provides guidelines for developing translations of psychological assessment instruments. It outlines several steps for the translation process including identifying a project director, developing the translation with a team of translators, conducting a back-translation, evaluation by a language service, testing the translation with bilingual subjects, collecting normative and clinical data from representative samples, adapting any scales that require modification, and developing standard scores before submitting a final prepublication report.

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90 views3 pages

Translation and Standardization Project Director: Guidelines For Developing Translations

The document provides guidelines for developing translations of psychological assessment instruments. It outlines several steps for the translation process including identifying a project director, developing the translation with a team of translators, conducting a back-translation, evaluation by a language service, testing the translation with bilingual subjects, collecting normative and clinical data from representative samples, adapting any scales that require modification, and developing standard scores before submitting a final prepublication report.

Uploaded by

ilyas khan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Guidelines for Developing Translations

TRANSLATION AND STANDARDIZATION PROJECT DIRECTOR

The initial step in the development of translations of the Press's instruments is the
identification of a Translation and Standardization Project Director, a researcher who
will supervise the development of the translation and ultimately declare it ready for
review, and will supervise the collection of normative and clinical data. This person
should be from the country or culture for which the translation is being developed and
must be a credible authority in the area of personality assessment, diagnosis, and
psychopathology, preferably a bilingual academic psychologist. He or she must be
fluent in the target language and must be at least reasonably conversant with English.
He or she should also be knowledgeable about the current English language
assessment literature and about issues and methods relating to translations of
psychological tests.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRANSLATION

The translation should be developed by a team of translators (no fewer than two) fluent
in the target language and in English, and knowledgeable about the English-language
assessment literature and about issues and methods relating to the translation of
psychological tests. The translators will independently translate the items and then
compare the results, negotiating differences in the translation of items to obtain the
most equivalent item.

DEVELOPMENT OF A BACK-TRANSLATION

The translated items should then be back-translated into English by someone other than
the translators to determine whether they are equivalent in meaning to the English
original. Any substantive differences between an original and back-translated item
should be considered by the translation team and revised as appropriate.

EVALUATION BY THE LANGUAGE SERVICE EMPLOYED BY THE


UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

The language service reviews the translation to determine whether each translated item
is equivalent in meaning to the English-language original. In assessing equivalence,
attention is paid to vocabulary, idiom, syntax, and tone. The review will also note any
errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. The University sends the service's report
to the translation team, with the requirement that they respond to every suggestion in
the report, either accepting the suggested change or providing a reason for not doing
so. After the suggestions in the language service's report have been incorporated into
the translation, it should be submitted to the project director for final approval.
CONDUCTING A BILINGUAL TEST-RETEST STUDY

To evaluate the adequacy of the translation, the original English-language version and
the translation should be administered to a minimum of 35 bilinguals who are fluent in
both languages and familiar with both cultures. Each subject must take the test in both
languages in two separate sessions, counterbalanced so that roughly half take the
English-language version first and the remaining subjects take the translated version
first. Their responses should then be used to examine scale score differences and
discrepancies at the item level. The baseline for evaluating differences should be the
normative test-retest correlations reported in the U.S. test manual and supporting
documents.

COLLECTION OF NORMATIVE AND CLINICAL DATA

At a minimum, a normative sample of 350 men and 350 women demographically


representative of the country of the target language should be collected, as well as a
demographically representative clinical sample of 100 men and 100 women. The US
norms are to be used for comparative research purposes only. They are not to be
included in published materials on translations.

SCALES THAT MAY REQUIRE ADAPTATION

It is often the case that in developing translations of the MMPI instruments the validity
indicators require adaptation from their original form in the English language versions
developed for use in the United States.

As a result of the translation, modifications in the choice and/or scoring of items may be
indicated in some cases. In particular, the translated item pairs that comprise
inconsistency scales VRIN and TRIN need to be carefully checked to ensure that each
translated item remains suitable for its intended use and scoring method as a VRIN or
TRIN item pair (Chapter 2 of the MMPI-2-RF Technical Manual describes in detail the
criteria for evaluating VRIN and TRIN item pairs and the corresponding steps for
selecting suitable pairs).

The same criteria and procedures apply to the MMPI-2 and MMPI-A inconsistency
scales. The software used to select the MMPI-2-RF VRIN-r and TRIN-r item pairs can
be made available to the translation team for implementation of this procedure.
Alternatively, the normative and clinical data can be sent to the Press for this purpose.

Each item pair is examined to determine that it retains the properties necessary to
function adequately as an inconsistent response indicator.

Pairs that do not function properly are deleted and, if possible, replaced by alternative
pairs with proper characteristics.
Once the vetted and approved inconsistency scales are available, the distribution of
scale scores for subjects comprising the normative and clinical samples are examined
and outliers removed from the samples.

When outliers have been removed, item endorsement frequencies of the infrequency
scale items (e.g., F, Fp) are examined and items that do not meet the requirements
used to assign them to an infrequency scale are deleted and, if possible, replaced with
appropriate/properly functioning items.

The distribution of scores on the infrequency scales for subjects in the normative and
clinical samples are then examined and outliers are removed from the samples.

DEVELOPING STANDARD SCORES

Two types of T scores are used with the MMPI instruments- linear and uniform. The
same type of T score will be developed for the scales of translated instruments.
Development of Uniform T scores requires use of a software package provided by the
Press.

PREPUBLICATION REPORT

A final report on Data Collection and Standardization of the Translation is to be


submitted to the Press before approval for publication is granted. This report will include
a description of how the steps just outlined were implemented, descriptive statistics,
reliability estimates, standard errors of measurement, and validity findings, as well as
scoring keys and T-score lookup tables for all scales scored on the U.S. version of the
instrument.

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