SIOP 2015: What to consider when translating I/O assessments

By Sue Orchard

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At Comms Multilingual, we have a great deal of experience in translating, localising and adapting Industrial/Organisational (I/O) assessments into other languages and we would like to share some of our experiences with you.

So when it comes to translating I/O assessments into other languages, what are the main things that should be taken into consideration?

  • Which items might need localisation and adaptation?
  • Are there items that can’t really be localised or adapted?
  • Are there acronyms or any jargon?
  • Is there any reference to weights, measures or currencies?
  • Is the original language used particularly complex?

We recommend that a review of the assessment items be carried out prior to starting any translation project to ascertain whether all the items could be used in another country.

There are many things that cause problems in translation and these will vary from language to language. For example, the word “empowering” is used a lot in I/O assessments.

Firstly, the gerund (-ing) ending is often very difficult to put into another language and secondly, many languages don’t have one single word that can accurately describe what is meant by “empowering”. In order to render this accurately in Spanish, for example, you would need to use 11 words in total.

The sentence structure in one language may be completely different from that in another language; if you have statements such as “I am a person who…”, in German, the verb comes at the end of a clause, so you completely change the emphasis of a statement as compared with the English.

Colloquialisms and jargon should be avoided at all costs as these are just impossible to translate in other languages.

Here’s an interesting German expression: “Hinter schwedischen Gardinen sitzen“, which means “To sit behind Swedish curtains”. What on earth does that mean?

Swedish steel used to be considered particularly good. The bars on prison windows were therefore often made from Swedish steel, hence the expression. Unless you actually knew this expression though, you wouldn’t have any idea what was meant by it.

In the UK, we have a slang expression “doing porridge”. And no, we don’t have some bizarre ritual involving the use of porridge in some way, although I know that some people may think it is bizarre to eat porridge at all!

What it means is to be in prison. Porridge was commonly used as prison food for inmates in UK prisons, and so “doing porridge” became a slang term for a prison sentence.

SIOP Conference

SIOP 2015 Sue at the stand 1 28.4.15We are very much looking forward to the SIOP conference in Philadelphia. Cicek Svensson and I will be there and we have a booth in the exhibit hall.

We are looking forward to discussions about the latest hot topics in the area of I/O Psychology and to finding out about the challenges people are facing when they want to put their assessments into other languages.

We hope to meet many of you there.

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