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@Linguist_CIOL DECEMBER/JANUARY The Linguist 17 FEATURES can be the right or the wrong fit, but that is always in relation to their environment. When it comes to psychometrics, the word 'test' is problematic and translators need to be very careful not to use words that define tools as 'tests' or imply there are right or wrong answers. Synonyms such as 'tool', 'method', 'questionnaire' and 'indicator' are preferred. English seems to have a plethora of helpful terms but this is not true for all languages. Psychometric tools are administered by practitioners but they have nothing to do with the field of medicine. 'To administer' in this context means to prepare and send the questionnaire to the candidate, while 'practitioner' refers to a qualified professional with the licence to administer, interpret and report the results of the questionnaire to the candidate. Context and specialist knowledge are of paramount importance, otherwise such simple and straightforward words can prove tricky to render correctly. EVERY WORD MATTERS Questions are constructed in such a way as to elicit responses offering insights relevant to specific personality traits. For instance, the question 'do you prefer football or tennis?' belongs to a group of questions attempting to identify whether the candidate is a team player or prefers to compete on their own. If football is not popular in the translator's country but rugby and wrestling are, the former would be a good replacement and the latter would not, because rugby is a team sport and wrestling is not. Often psychometricians will provide translators with the information behind each question to help them understand what exactly is being measured. This provides vital contextual information that helps translators understand the aim of each question. However, the risk is that the translator ends up phrasing the question in a way that leads the candidate to favour one of the answer options precisely because they understand so much. Avoiding that is one of the biggest challenges when translating psychometrics. When translating psychometric reports, in addition to lexical challenges, translators face style, grammar and modality issues. Results reports contain descriptive rather than prescriptive language. Candidates are told what they could be doing better or differently, instead of what they should be doing. Furthermore, results are interpreted by a qualified practitioner, which means the candidate can be coached through the process of understanding themselves. The language used in the reports must facilitate this journey of self-discovery. Words such as 'weakness' are avoided. Instead, similar expressions that carry a positive spin are used, such as 'area for improvement'. CREATING THE RIGHT TOOLS Producing psychometric tools in another language entails a rigorous and often lengthy process. Organisations request three translations of the same content with back translations. Once these are delivered, practitioners reconcile the three versions into one by choosing the rendering they believe works best. In cases of doubt, they hold a conference call with the translator to understand more or to ask them to amend an item. Once a questionnaire is published, the data collection process starts. This data is used as a norm against which candidate results are compared in the future. So when a questionnaire launches in a country for the first time, the organisation will not have any research data from that location to back it up. Once a specific number of respondents have completed the questionnaire, the researchers can analyse the results to see which items work and which don't, rephrasing or removing these items. This means that it takes a while for the questionnaire translation process to be finalised. One indicator that an item is not working efficiently is when several candidates have failed to understand it; another is where the norms regarding the item seem to be unusual. Cultural norms are, perhaps, the most fascinating aspect of psychometrics. Psychometricians have access to responses from candidates of different origins and ethnicities. Through time they can identify cultural trends and the impact on personality. Their research data can tell you in which countries most people identify as extroverts, and which cultures condition people into becoming more relaxed. Undoubtedly culture, religion, society and family influence our personalities. What psychometricians try to do is understand the essence once these constructs are removed. However, psychometrics is a field developed mainly by Western minds. This makes its application on a diverse audience somewhat challenging. Recently, psychometricians have started to become more aware of translatability issues. There are courses which teach them how to structure their tools and question items in a way that can be translated more easily. This means a faster global outreach with fewer localisation needs. RESPECT AT WORK Perhaps because they know more about the human brain than the rest of us, psychometricians appreciate linguistic nuances, and understand the value of good translation, translators and translation processes. It is a field that will continue to grow because understanding the human psyche is a never-ending task. Measuring mental processes, interpreting results and developing a conversation around them will always require specialist human input. Add layers of culture, language, society, religion and gender, and you end up with a complex package – one that a skilled translator with an understanding of psychometrics, cultural insights and linguistic competences can unpack, restructure, reseal and resell to a new market, making our role invaluable for this fascinating field. GETTING INTO PSYCHOMETRICS My translation project management experience and knowledge of CAT tools enabled me to become a Product and Translation Project Manager for Oxford Psychologists Press. I learnt a lot through the course of this work, and also received psychometric training to become a qualified practitioner of FIRO (Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation) and MBTI Step I and Step II (the Myers-Briggs tool). © SHUTTERSTOCK