Tang Siew Tzuh, Dixon Jane
Yale University School of Nursing, 100 Church Street South, P.O. Box 9740, New Haven, CT 06536-0740, USA.
J Nurs Meas. 2002 Spring-Summer;10(1):59-76. doi: 10.1891/jnum.10.1.59.52544.
Translating well-established English instruments into target languages other than English and testing cross-cultural validity to prove that the same attributes are being measured in each cultural group or country are required before a multicultural or international study can be conducted and cross-cultural comparisons of study results can be applied. However, rigorous and systematic cross-cultural efforts to test the effectiveness of specific translation methods are rare. This article presents a model of translation processes and empirical validation of the translated instrument through description of the translation of a selected instrument--the Sense of Coherence (SOC) Scale--from English into Chinese. A cyclic process of forward translations, back translations, and expert evaluation of equivalence by bilingual and English speaking experts was conducted to achieve conceptual equivalence between the original and translated instruments. Empirical validation of the Chinese SOC scale data from a group of bilingual Chinese people demonstrated non-identical, but comparable, item and scale means and variances, internal consistency, and relationships to an external criterion. Advantages and difficulties of using multi-rounds, multi-experts, and multi-methods to establish translation equivalence and to validate the translated Chinese SOC scale are discussed.
在开展多文化或国际性研究并应用研究结果进行跨文化比较之前，需要将成熟的英文工具翻译成英语以外的目标语言，并测试跨文化效度，以证明在每个文化群体或国家中所测量的是相同的属性。然而，针对特定翻译方法有效性进行严格且系统的跨文化研究却很少见。本文通过描述将选定工具——连贯感（SOC）量表从英文翻译成中文的过程，呈现了一个翻译流程模型以及对翻译后工具的实证验证。通过正向翻译、回译以及由双语和英语专家进行等效性专家评估的循环过程，实现了原始工具与翻译后工具之间的概念等效。来自一组双语中国人的中文SOC量表数据的实证验证表明，各项目和量表的均值与方差虽不相同但具有可比性，具备内部一致性，且与外部标准存在关联。本文还讨论了使用多轮、多专家和多方法来建立翻译等效性并验证翻译后的中文SOC量表的优点与困难。
