Is User-Validation Necessary for a Spanish Translation of the Microsoft Product Reaction Cards Tool?

Abstract

Current research on Hispanic consumers focuses on Hispanics as a market segment, not their user experience, usability preferences, or cultural differences. This study evaluated the effectiveness of three versions of the Microsoft Product Reaction Cards (MPRC) tool in Spanish when capturing user experience feedback from Hispanic consumers. Since the MPRC tool has never been used in Spanish there was a need to determine whether a user-validated translation can enhance user feedback from Hispanic Consumers better than a direct translation or a translator-validated translation of the same tool. The goal was to determine whether there were any differences in the feedback elicited from Hispanic participants based on the type of Spanish translation of the MPRC tool they were provided (direct translation, translator-validated, and user-validated). The direct translation of the MPRC was done by using the first choice provided in Spanish to the English word in Google Translate. The exact wording provided in Spanish was used as the direct translation for the English word. The translator-validated translation was created by one translator after revising the results from the direct translation. The user-validated translation was created based on an online study with 52 bilingual participants in English and Spanish. Results indicate that the participants in the direct-translation list and translator-validated list were not significantly more satisfied than the participants using the user-validated list. Furthermore, translation quality ratings were not significantly higher for the translator and user-validated translation conditions. Participants seemed resilient to translation quality perhaps due to their bilingualism. Future research should address the effects of bilingualism on reading comprehension of material with poor translation quality.