Linguistic Quality Assurance and Control of a worldwide public opinion survey translation

About the survey

A worldwide survey on a broad array of subjects ranging from people’s attitude towards current affairs to views about their own lifestyle. This case study provides some examples of public opinion survey translation best practices. 

Project Scope

cApStAn is responsible for Linguistic Quality Assurance (before translation) and Linguistic Quality Control (after translation) for 40 – 60 different languages.

Challenges

The main challenges of the project in terms of linguistic quality control are the short timeline and the variety of languages involved, including many “rare” languages, such as Bicolano or Dagbani.

Project execution process

Outcome achieved

• The Translatability Assessment method identified potential issues at the source level.
• The client’s translators followed the cApStAn translation and adaptation notes, which provided them with focussed, survey-specific guidelines. This helped them minimise perception shifts (culture-driven) and meaning shifts (language-driven).
• The verification process checked that the translation & adaptation notes were correctly followed, thus ensuring linguistic correctness and equivalence to the source version
• The survey was rolled out as per the schedule, client was happy with the outcome in terms of quality, cost and timelines, and we continue to work with them for additional projects with new added languages every year.
• The cost of this extra layer of quality assurance of translated versions of the survey was offset by increased data validity and comparability.

Want to try this out on your materials?

Select some sample items or sample questions, and request a free pilot at hermes@capstan.be or contact us via the form below for more details.