Psychometric Tests & Assessments

Specialist services for the translation, localisation and adaptation of I/O, clinical and educational assessments

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Made-to-measure translations for your tests and assessments

Comms Multilingual specialises in the translation and adaptation of all types of test and assessment.

We offer expertise in the industrial/organisational, educational and clinical psychology areas, where a deep understanding of the subject matter is essential for the creation of quality translations.

The services we offer are fully flexible and depend on the type of content and your individual needs: translating a personality test presents different challenges to the translation of a cognitive ability test or to a multimedia SJT, for example.

Where item content is concerned, we generally recommend adding additional quality assurance steps to ensure the highest level of equivalence. For the translation of a feedback or development report, it may be possible to allow for a slightly “leaner” approach, where we simply translate and proofread.

The Comms Multilingual translation, localisation and adaptation methodology is based on years of experience, as well as our thorough knowledge of the ITC guidelines for translating and adapting tests and assessments, which helps ensure that translations of your material are defensible.

After all, if the process for developing the original test was rigorous, then why shouldn’t the same be said for its translation?

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Pre-Translation Analysis

The aim here is to understand the nuances and ambiguities in a given text before beginning translation, thus ensuring our translators’ interpretations are consistent with one another.
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Back Translation

We can add an extra level of quality assurance to your translation processes by translating back into the original language, which can then be used to check the meaning is conveyed.
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Quality Assurance

Once the initial translation is complete, we use a combination of experienced human checkers and software tools to check accuracy, consistency and appropriateness of language.

Expert Review

Where you are not able to recruit your own SMEs, we can find a native-speaker expert in your domain to review and finalise the translations produced by our linguists.

Dual Forward Translation

In some cases, you may prefer to follow the dual translation route. Here, we complete two independent translations and combine them to form a final “best of both” translation.

In-Context Checking

When the translations have been uploaded back to your delivery platforms or sample reports generated, we check the end result in-context for any layout, display or formatting issues.
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Considerations and Challenges

Linguistic Ambiguities
Ambiguous words such as “upset” can be translated in many different ways. In order to ensure a correct translation, clear definitions must be sought and provided ahead of the translation commencing.
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Do acronyms such as “SWOT” need to be translated or are they in common use in the target country? Will an abbreviation be understood correctly by a non-native speaker?
Localisation
What needs to be localised? In one assessment, we needed to translate an item about cricket. As cricket is the third most popular spectator sport in the UK, we therefore needed to establish and use a similarly popular team-based spectator sport in each country to ensure equivalence.
Untranslatable Concepts
Are there things that just can’t be translated well? For example, the word “empowering” may need far more explanation in another language to really get across the meaning, which may not fit in with the requirements of the test.
Adaptation of Values
Is there any reference to currencies? You can’t just take a currency and substitute it with another currency name. For example, the Italian lira used to have much higher denominations than other currencies; you couldn’t just talk about 1 lira as that made no sense, whereas nowadays you can easily talk about 1 euro.
Hear in the short video above one of our clients talking about their work with us in translating assessments that focus on sales personnel recruitment and development.

Typical Assessment Translation Projects

  • Candidate recruitment
  • Situational judgement tests
  • Verbal reasoning
  • Numerical reasoning
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Aptitude tests
  • Personality assessments
  • Leadership skills, and many more
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Featured Case Studies

We are involved in projects covering a wide variety of business, clinical and educational psychology assessments in many different areas. Read more about some of the projects that we have worked on.

Cognitive Ability Test Translation

When Croatia acceded to the European Union, we were asked to translate a range of cognitive ability tests that could be used to recruit Croatian civil servants.
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Translation of Organisational Culture Tool & Guide

We worked with our client to grow their personal and organisational development tool from a single language to 25 languages over the course of two years.
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Situational Judgement Test (SJT) Translation

Our client won the contract to assist in the recruitment for a multinational grad scheme, and asked us to translate the SJT that was to be used to sift candidates.
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Request a Quotation

If you would like a quotation, please provide us with the following information:

  1. Which type of material do you need to have translated (i.e. assessment, test, exam, reports, etc.)?
  2. Which language or languages do you need and for which locales?
  3. Do you require both forward and back translation?
  4. Do you need expert review, cognitive debriefing or normative data collection services?
  5. In which format will the text to be translated come to us (Word, Excel, HTML, PowerPoint, QuarkXpress, etc.)?
  6. In which format would you like it to be returned to you?

Please contact us and send the materials by email or FTP so that we can ascertain if there is anything else that we need to know in order to give you an accurate quotation.