Target Language Version Research Articles

Validating a Measure to Delineate the Clinical Trials Nursing Role in Italy

In Italy, the role of a nurse in cancer research is beginning to develop, but instruments developed to delineate the dimensions of the Italian clinical trials nursing role are lacking. This study aimed to translate into Italian the Clinical Trials Nursing Questionnaire (CTNQ) and assess its content validity, internal consistency, and stability reliability. Forward-backward translation and review by experts were performed to assess linguistic and content validation. Internal consistency reliability was computed using Cronbach alpha and by administering the translated CTNQ to a sample of 30 research nurses coming from different Italian districts. To determine the test-retest reliability, a copy of the questionnaire was given again to a subgroup of 10 research nurses. The pretest and posttest scores were compared using kappa coefficient. The comparison of the target language version with the original version allowed us to consider the translation of CTNQ as acceptable. The analyses revealed a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .98 for the frequency scale and .96 for the importance scale. The overall kappa coefficient was 0.98 for the frequency scale and 0.99 for the importance scale. The CTNQ is a valid and reliable instrument for the assessment of the research nurse's role in Italy.

LOCALIZATION OF MEASUREMENT INSTRUMENTS: EXAMPLE OF THE AMSQUESTIONNAIRE

BACKGROUND Use of the quality of life questionnaires and other health-related measurement instrumentsin medicine is expanding and this trend is associated with the need for availability of suchinstruments across languages and cultures. However, the required adaptation is not amere translation, but has to follow certain procedural steps. CONCLUSIONS Based on the general international guidelines we propose a minimal 6-step process of suchlocalisation (forward translation, target language version synthesis and adaptation, backward translation, source language versions comparison and target adaptation, comprehensibility testing, reliability testing). The proposed procedure was used for localisation ofthe validated AMS questionnaire from English into Slovenian. The descriptive results aswell as the stability and internal consistency testing (? = 0.89; overall Cronbach ? = 0.875)show the Slovenian AMS to be a methodologically reliable localised version, thus suggestingthe appropriateness of the proposed localisation procedure

Straight to the Source: Using Phaedrus and La Fontaine to Retranslate Fable V, 25, of Félix María Samaniego

Salvaging Literary Models in Translation Andre Lefevere describes translation of rhymed, metrical poetry into target-language rhyme and meter as a double bondage, and dismisses enterprise as doomed to failure from start in his prescriptive study, Translating Poetry: Seven Strategies and a Blueprint (49). This landmark work of Translation Studies movement he helped spearhead may be faulted for its excessive reliance on outdated, quirky, even mediocre English versions of Catullus 64 he selects as basis for his analysis of poetic translation, a specialized act which, he writes, becomes necessary when `variations' obscure rather than express original author's interpretation of a theme (99). While surely Lefevere's insistence that a translation capture source text's communicative value is central to this endeavor, his position seems to preclude translating a poem written in rhyme and meter into anything other than a vaguely poetical diction too timorous to assume identity of an entirely new text. This rather confining conceptualization of poetic translation thus seems to allow no other option than loose metrical transliteration. It is telling that Lefevere never provides reader with his own rendering of Catullus 64, after having judged, often harshly, nearly twenty models to be, in their own specific ways, misguided or deficient. Translation is a most pragmatic process, and for influential author of Translating Poetry, highly normative theoretical precepts occlude very real demands of choice. Lefevere does, however, raise an often neglected point with regard to preserving intertextual echoes in target-language versions. Broadly stated, he is troubled that the demands of meter require sacrifice of accuracy (55), an accuracy, given his staunch opposition to carrying over meter and rhyme, one must assume he conceives to be primarily semantic in nature. Lefevere objects, for instance, to T. Hart-Davies's rendering of lines 204-6 of Catullus 64, annuit invicto caelestum numine rector/quo motu tellus atque horrida contremuerunt/aequora, as mighty Thunderer his dread assent/Nodded propitious and sound was sent, for being a quiet falsification, and writes: No sound at all is sent in source text; mere fact that Jupiter nods is enough to make earth and seas tremble. In source text passage is, moreover, a hardly veiled allusion to Zeus' nod in Iliad; to give a garbled translation of this particular passage is to obscure poem's lines of descent, which Catullus definitely wants to establish, because they are part of what is expected of doctus poeta he is trying to be. (55) Putting aside Lefevere's fondness for authorial attention as well as his witheringly close cross-reading, observation that source materials--whether direct quotations, paraphrases, oblique echoes or allusions--are carelessly overlooked, poorly translated, or simply too foreign to survive transference into target-language texts appears well taken. The thorny problems of historical relevance and cultural equivalence vis-a-vis linguistic intertexuality are too often obscured by resulting distortions in target-language texts, which may clumsily veil their originals' aesthetic intent or provenience. Decades of structuralist and post-structuralist poetics have refigured New Critical conceptualization of aesthetic text as a self-contained, spatial object whose more or less stable meaning lies latent, but poised for extraction, beneath a congeries of tension, paradox, repetition, and contradiction. The post-formalist poetic text is now more widely perceived to be a fluid, experiential, even temporal matrix where language, culture, reception, and history, both socio-political and literary, combine to complicate faith in poem as static artifact whose unchanging significance remains readily retrievable through tried-and-true methods of close reading. …

A Psychometric Theory of Evaluations of Item and Scale Translations

A psychometric theory of equivalence of meanings of items and item responses in original and target language versions of psychological scales is developed. Equivalence of translated items is defined in terms of probabilities of a specified response being evoked by two stimuli among individuals with the same amount of the latent trait assessed by the items. In the case of translated items that form psychological scales, the stimuli are the source and target language versions of the item. The specified responses are correct or positive responses to these measurement items. The extent to which items are equivalent across the different language versions can be evaluated within the framework of item response theory (Lord & Novick, 1968). Methods of equating scales containing culturally general, etic, items and culturally specific, emic, items are outlined. These techniques can be used to increase the cultural relevance of scales by generating and including emic concepts while permitting comparisons across cultures and languages on the basis of scales equated with reference to the common, etic items. Results of applications of these techniques to one instrument (the Job Descriptive Index; Smith, Kendall, & Hulin, 1969) translated into five languages and administered to approximately 3,000 employees in six countries are discussed briefly.

Kan De Dienaar Beter Zijn Dan De Meester?

In the course of history there have been different schools of thought about how texts should be translated, and the effect translations have on the target language literature, either directly or indirectly. Garmt Stuiveling, formerly professor of Dutch Studies at the University of Amsterdam, and for many years chairman of the Dutch Writers' Union, produced the following dictum: in a translation sixty-five per cent of what the author has tried to express, reaches the reader. In translators' circles a variety of views can be heard. This one for instance: the profession of a translator is more demanding than that of a writer. A writer uses his own style, but a translator must master a number of styles, since he translates different authors. Or this one: the achievement of a translator is equal to that of a writer; the source language version and the target language version provide texts of equal literary value. A more modest view, and the one held by the writer of the present article, could be phrased as follows: literary translation is a craft, a creative craft to be sure, but still a craft. And playing with words and stylistic features is part of that craft. A literary translator is to be compared to a performing artist, rather than his creative counterpart. It is noted that there has never been any research into the norms of present day translators. This means that judging translations, whether for purposes of reviews, a jury's decision or the awarding of grants, is often a matter of inspired guesswork. If such research were ever carried out, it should also discover whether translators actually use in their own work the translation strategies they profess to be using. Finally a selection of translating errors culled from literary works is proof that translators are not always good readers, to judge by the non-sense they sometimes manage to produce.

Applications of item response theory to analysis of attitude scale translations.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champa ign Methods of detecting item bias developed from item response theory (IRT) are generalized to analyze the fidelity of translations of psychological scales into foreign languages. These IRT methods are considered as alternatives to classical methods. Item characteristic curves obtained from responses to the original and target language versions of the instrument are examined for significance of dif- ferences. Data from a Spanish translation of the Job Descriptive Index admin- istered to 203 Spanish-speaking employees are used to illustrate the method. Significance tests indicate that three items on the 72-item instrument are biased. Subsequent inspection of these three items by a language consultant revealed inadequate translation of one item. Because the number of items determined to be biased by significance testing is quite close to the expected number of Type I errors, it is concluded that the overall quality of the translation is quite good. Finally, it is argued that equivalent item characteristic curves across the original and translated items of a scale produce equivalent measurements in both lan- guages, and nonequivalent item characteristic curves pinpoint differences between the two versions of the scale. Two increasingly important areas of ap- plied psychological research are cross-cul- tural social psychology and cross-national in- dustrial-organizational psychology. The need to assess and make statements about differ- ences between cultures as well as within cul- tures is an integral part of both areas. Herein lies the problem addressed in this article: Cross-cultural research depends on cross-cul- tural comparisons, which, in turn, usually depend upon the meaningfulness of measur-