Much medical research is only available to patients who speak English, because translations of documents and explanations of what the research entails in languages other than English are often not available. This is especially problematic when the research may provide potentially life-extending or life-saving medications or procedures. But translation can be expensive and add months to a research study’s timeline.
This week, Pediatrics is early releasing a special article by Dr. Alyssa Coffin and colleagues from Boston Children’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Children’s Hospital Colorado, NYU Langone Health, and the University of Washington, entitled “Creating Culturally Adapted Multilingual Materials for Research,” which describes their approach to simultaneously translating research materials into multiple languages (10.1542/peds.2023-063988).
The authors describe their approach as balancing feasibility and rigor. The steps included:
- Selecting the target languages
- Professionally translating documents into the target languages
- Finding bilingual experts to review the translated documents
- Bringing the bilingual experts together to reach consensus on the translations
- Piloting of the translated documents with patients or potential participants whose preferred language was one of the target languages and who could provide feedback about any confusing concepts or errors
- Entering the translated documents into a single database
- Doing a final quality check that all of the documents in the database are correct
The team translated the research documents into 8 different languages. The process took 3-6 months for each language, but because they did all 8 languages simultaneously, it only took about 6 months for the entire process!
If you do any type of research, this is an important article to read. The authors identify key components that contributed to a successful outcome and describe lessons learned that will be helpful for others wishing to do this.
