Framed

The role of translators: Adaptation of mental health tests beyond clinical research

The new issue of the European Medical Writers Association journal, Medical Writing, is out!

This issue focuses on translation, and I was asked to contribute with a piece on mental health translation. You can find the full issue here in open access (my article is in page 40).

There were so many things I wanted to talk about! However, I decided to write an introductory article about the translation of mental health questionnaires since I thought that could be of great interest to EMWA readers.

But I’m not talking about the linguistic validation of clinical outcome assessments for clinical trials.

Instead, in this piece, I use my experience and a real-life story to discuss test adaptations for behavioral and social sciences—all from the perspective of a translator:

  • What is the test adaptation process?
  • What are the steps involved?
  • What are the differences with linguistic validation?
  • What are the standards in this field?
  • How do translators fit across the different steps?
  • Why is this process important and what is at stake?

  • I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the issue and the insights of my colleagues. Thank you to Ana Sofia Correia and Claire Harmer for the invitation.

    I hope this article is of interest as an introduction to this topic.

    Author
    Karol Tapia de Moya

    is a psychologist and English to Spanish translator. She specializes in the fields of psychology, healthcare and medicine, and education. In this blog, she writes about everything she knows or has learned that could be useful or of interest to you!