![]() Discussions are likely to focus on three areas: 1. The language manager works with the rest of the team to make sure the final assessment is harmonized across all languages, so that the small adaptations required by each language are compared across languages to ensure that the result is balanced as much as possible.Īt the meeting, the team looks over the two drafts. The language manager may be a testing expert in the subject matter who will work with the translators to decide if the translated assessment is ready for pretesting. This time the translators, the reviewer and the language manager all attend. Harmonizationĭoes everything play well together? With the second draft of the assessment translation completed, a second meeting takes place to make sure the translation is balanced with the assessment in other languages. The reviewer brings a fresh approach and works alongside the translators to create a second draft. The goal is to reach agreement on what translation is best. The reviewer should not have been part of the original translation team. Once the translation team has finished the first draft, we arrange for the translators to meet with a reviewer in a virtual conference. These notes include questions about word choice and points on cultural nuance. The goal is to bring more than one point of view across without doubling costs for the review conference to follow.īut whichever approach our clients decide to take, we ask the translators to keep careful notes as they proceed. ![]() If the survey is long and the budget is tight, we can have each translator translate different sections. This way, we benefit from the assessment translators’ combined expertise and different points of view. To begin, we arrange for a draft translation of the survey using a team of two or more translators. Assessment questions have special vocabulary and syntax that is sometimes at odds with normal written language instruments have sections addressed to different audiences (interviewer, respondent, programmer, etc.) and questions and answer scales reflect measurement goals that are opaque to an untrained reader. Translators working with assessments and tests need to be able to recognize the design features and various components in order to handle them appropriately. You need to start off with the right translators though. Team Translationįirst things first: What is team translation? Simply put, team assessment translation refers to a group of people with specific skills and roles who are brought together to complete a defined process. Let’s take a look at an ideal team translation process below, but clients should take their own customized approach, selecting the tools that work best for them. This ensures good quality, easily understood assessments in the target languages. One answer is team assessment translation. Harmonization becomes the ideal, the level playing field where all test takers or respondents get the same chance at an accurate response, regardless of language. They have to be adapted, changed to fit a given cultural context or modified because of the peculiarities of a particular grammar.Īnd with each change in each language, it becomes more and more difficult to achieve ideal testing outcomes among different groups of language speakers. The effort you put into creating a useful assessment in the original language may go to waste if you can’t get reliable responses from different language communities.Įven worse, some questions simply don’t translate. These problems undermine a test’s effectiveness. In some cases, test respondents may not understand poorly-translated questions or may be unable to give accurate answers. Nuance in expression and cultural context call meanings into question. But assessment translation is rarely word for word. Without context word choice gets tricky, as any test preparer knows. In tests and assessments, questions are kept short, and so are short on context. To get the best from a respondent, you owe it to him to communicate in his best language. This is especially important for any organization working internationally. Making people take a test in a language they don’t understand well actually trashes the results.Īccuracy demands that assessments be given in the language of understanding. And not everyone who speaks English speaks it well enough to answer questions accurately. The fact is that not everyone who takes a test or assessment speaks English. ![]() ![]() Best Practices for Test and Assessment Translation ![]()
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