Category Archives: Survey translation and localisation

by Steve Dept, cApStAn CEO When I used to run a small translation agency in the nineties, the majority of my clients were universities. Researchers wrote papers, reports and questionnaires (in elegant French, accurate German, factual Dutch or in rather poor English) and needed them translated. They received documents relevant to their work, written in …

“Chez cApStAn — where great minds come together and share”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village To quote scholars Barbara Byrne and Fons van de Vijver (2010), the goal of translating scales in multilingual and cross-cultural comparative survey is to produce an instrument that “measures the same construct(s) in exactly the same way” across all language versions. We know of course …

“The challenge of translating scales in multilingual surveys and the value of leveraging “legacy materials””

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The non profit public service Gilani Gallopedia has taken on itself the mammoth task of pooling all the current global polling efforts on COVID-19, in a commendable effort to support the WAPOR network. It has searched over 200 national and 19 multinational polls for the …

“Over 200 national and multilingual polls, in six continents, are measuring people’s feelings and opinions about the coronavirus pandemic”

Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village A recent article in Slator looks at the role the language service industry plays in the drug approval process, a very relevant issue at a time when 300+ clinical trials involving Covid-19 or coronavirus are being conducted around the world in the quest to find a vaccine. …

“Linguistic quality assurance in the translation of high stakes content related to the coronavirus pandemic”

by Steve Dept, cApStAn CEO cApStAn has made in to the Top 100 on this year’s edition of the Slator LSP Index. We are listed in the category of the “Boutique Language Service Providers”. cApStAn is the only Belgian agency listed in this category, and is in the top 10 as regards growth rate from …

“Breaking news: cApStAn listed in the Slator LSP Index”

by Steve Dept, cApStAn CEO All language service providers will claim that they only work with experienced translators, which is mostly true, but this does not per se ensure translation quality. Serious organisations – and there are many – will invest time in preparing their survey translation and adaptation thoroughly: this may include carrying out …

“Why adequate training of linguists is a key component of translation quality in survey translation and adaptation”

In general, the press reports too much on country ranking and benchmarking, and too little on more interesting data such as within-country variance; gender equality in the three OECD PISA studies domains; resources invested in education; the correlation between the students’ (and schools’) socioeconomic status and their performance on PISA literacy scales; the effect of …

“Release of OECD PISA studies 2018 results – worldwide resonance 🌎”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner cApStAn linguistic quality control is a brand name (and a registered trademark) for a holistic approach to translation and adaptation of assessments and surveys; cApStAn also stands for a certain lifestyle and spirit: “Excellence among friends”, as one of the founding partners likes to put it. When we take …

“A Sense of Direction”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village A new volume of the Wiley Series on Survey Methodology has just come out: “Advances in Comparative Survey Methods: Multinational, Multiregional and Multicultural Contexts ” and is publicly available now. We have contributed chapter 16, titled “Documenting the Survey Translation and Monitoring Process”. Survey documentation …

“Advances in Comparative Survey Methods: Multinational, Multiregional and Multicultural Contexts”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Welcome to the third issue of cApStAn’s monthly newsletter. For those of you who did not see the first two editions, in our newsletter we share news about recent developments in the cApStAn ecosystem as well as snippets of information about and around the linguistics …

“cApStAn June 2018 Newsletter”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village “Public opinion in a changing world” was the theme of the 2018 annual conference of WAPOR, the World Association for Public Opinion Research, which took place in Marrakech from June 27-30. Attending on behalf of cApStAn LQC was a great experience in terms of the …

“Challenges in ensuring cross-cultural equivalence of scales in multilingual surveys”

by Steve Dept – cApStAn partner In the late nineties, Steve Dept was involved in two large-scale translation and adaptation projects. As it happens, he was particularly concerned with the time and resources spent on multiple revisions that did not seem to warrant incremental improvements in faithfulness or fluency. The effect of a translation review …

“20 years ago: Avenue de la Renaissance 1”