CHALLENGES IN TRANSLATING THE EPWORTH...
Transcript of CHALLENGES IN TRANSLATING THE EPWORTH...
CHALLENGES IN TRANSLATING THE EPWORTH SLEEPINESS SCALE (ESS) INTO 66 LANGUAGES
Piero Bindi1, Ana Bayles2, Catherine Acquadro1, Murray Johns3
1Author Collaboration Unit, Mapi Research Trust, Lyon, France; 2Mapi Languages Services, Lyon, France; 3Epworth Sleep Centre, Melbourne, Australia
For more information, please contact:
Piero Bindi, [email protected]; www.mapigroup.com
In each country, the linguistic validation was conducted with the author of the
ESS, using either the standard forward/backward methodology or the adjusted
process, with reviews by the author and cognitive interviews with 5 patients. See
Figure 1 for the standard process.
The basis for discussion was the list of concepts elaborated with the author. For
each country, the history grid of the translation process was analyzed.
The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) is a self-administered questionnaire with
eight questions, providing a measure of a person’s general level of daytime
sleepiness, or their average sleep propensity in daily life. The ESS asks people
to rate, on a 4-point scale (0 – 3), their usual chances of dozing off or falling
asleep in eight different situations or activities that most people engage in as
part of their daily lives (e.g., sitting, reading, watching TV, etc.). Situations differ
in their somnificity, or sleep-inducing characteristics. See Table 1.
© MW Johns, 1990-97
The objective of this study is to present the challenges faced during the
translation of the ESS (originally developed in Australian English) into 66
different languages representing nine language families. See Table 2.
Most of the situations or activities described in the ESS were easily translated
and culturally relevant.
Only item 7 (Sitting quietly after a lunch without alcohol) raised a lot of
discussion in 46 languages*, either for cultural or syntactic/semantic or for all
reasons. Most of the discussions has been around the translation of “without
alcohol”:
- In three countries, representing eight languages, i.e., India (English, Hindi,
Telugu, Urdu), Israel (Hebrew, Russian) and Malaysia (English, Malay),
“without alcohol” was put between brackets since consumption of alcohol is
not encouraged for cultural reasons.
- In 29 languages, verbs or periphrasis clarifying the meaning of “without
alcohol” were used (e.g., without drinking alcohol , without using alcohol,
without taking alcohol, or “during which you do not drink alcohol”). See
examples in Table 3.
- “Alcohol” was replaced by equivalents meaning “alcoholic beverage(s)” or
“wine, beer or other alcoholic beverages” or “alcoholic drinks” in 11
languages [i.e., Arabic, Czech, German (Austria, Germany, Switzerland),
Italian, Kannada, Portuguese, Russian (Russia, Ukraine), Slovak].
- The 20 languages for which no difficulties were encountered are listed in
Table 4.
Table 2. Language families and branches of the 66 target languages
into which the ESS was translated
The Epworth Sleepiness Scale was translated in 66 languages with no major
difficulties.
The rigorous methodology used was essential in producing ESS translations
conceptually equivalent to the Australian English original.
Table 1. The Epworth Sleepiness Scale
Objectives
Methods
Results
Conclusion
Table 3. Item 7 – Examples of periphrasis clarifying meaning
Family Branch Sub-branch Language (Country)
Afro-Asiatic Semitic Central Semitic
Southwest
SemiticArabic (Israel)
Northwest
SemiticHebrew
AustronesianMalayo-
polynesianFilipino, Malay
Dravidian Southern Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu
Indo-
European
Balto Slavic
Baltic East Baltic Latvian
Slavic
East SlavicUkrainian, Russian (Israel, Russia,
Ukraine)
South Slavic Bulgarian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian
West Slavic Czech, Polish, Slovak
Germanic
North Germanic Danish, Swedish
West Germanic
Afrikaans, Dutch (Belgium, The
Netherlands), English (Canada, India,
Israel, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore,
South Africa, UK, USA), German (Austria,
Germany, Switzerland)
Hellenic Greek
Indo-
IranianIndo-Aryan Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Urdu
Italic Romance
Gallo-RomanceFrench (Belgium, Canada, France,
Switzerland)
Ibero-Romance
Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish (Argentina,
Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Spain,
USA)
Italo Dalmatian Italian
Romanian Romanian
Japonic Japanese
Koranic Korean
Sino-Tibetan Sinnitic ChineseCantonese (Hong Kong), Mandarin
(China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan)
TurkicCommon
TurkicOrghuz Turkish
Ural-Altaic UralicHungarian
Finnic Finnish
Figure 1. Standard Linguistic Validation Process
Language
(Country)
Translation Backtranslation into
English
Croatian (Croatia) 7. Sjedim mirno nakon ručka, a
nisam pio alkohol
7. Sitting quietly after lunch
and did not drink alcohol
English (UK) 7. Sitting quietly after a lunch
without having drunk alcohol
Finnish (Finland) 7. Rauhallisesti istuskellessa
lounaan jälkeen ilman, että on
nautittu alkoholia
7. Sitting quietly after lunch
and alcohol is not
consumed
Latvian (Latvia) 7. Klusām sēžot pēc pusdienām,
kurās nav lietots alkohols
7. Sitting quietly after lunch,
without using alcohol
Mandarin
(Singapore)
7. 午餐后静静地坐着,没有喝酒时 7. Sitting quietly after lunch,
when not drinking
Spanish (Spain) 7. Sentado/a tranquilamente
después de la comida sin haber
tomado alcohol
7. Sitting quietly after lunch
without having taken
alcohol
Ukrainian
(Ukraine)
7. Сидячи спокійно після обіду,
під час якого Ви не вживали
алкоголь
7. Sitting quietly after lunch,
during which you do not
drink alcohol
Table 4. List of languages for which Item 7 was not an issue
Afrikaans (South Africa), Danish, Dutch (Belgium, The Netherlands),
English (Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, United States), French
(Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland), Greek, Hungarian, Japanese,
Malayalam, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil
*Some languages have cumulated translating issues. Therefore, the number of languages listed may excess
the number of 46.