Introduction

The Census Bureau’s Methodology and Standards Council sets statistical standards for the Census Bureau’s surveys and censuses. This responsibility encompasses providing guidelines for the translation of Census Bureau data collection instruments and related materials. This guideline provides direction to program managers to help them and their teams ensure that Census Bureau data collection instruments and related materials that are translated from a source language into a target language are of the highest quality possible, given available resources.

Translation Guideline

The Census Bureau developed guidelines for the translation of data collection instruments and supporting materials in order to ensure that such documents translated from a source language into a target language are reliable, complete, accurate, and culturally appropriate. When the translated text conveys the intended meaning of the original text, the translation is deemed reliable. Translations that do not add any new information to the translated document and do not omit information provided in the source document are said to be complete. An accurate translation is one that is free of spelling and grammatical errors. Cultural appropriateness is achieved when the message conveyed in the translated text is appropriate for the target population. In addition to meeting the aforementioned criteria, translated Census Bureau data collection instruments and related materials should also have semantic, conceptual, and normative equivalence.

The matter of equivalence and the extent to which there is equivalence (to the source language) in the translated text is central to the quality and appropriateness of a translation. If the translation lacks equivalence, then the intended meaning of the information in the source language text is not appropriately conveyed in the translation. The literature points to several types of equivalence. Semantic equivalence refers to the extent to which the terms and sentence structures that give meaning to the information presented in the source language is maintained in the translated text. Conceptual equivalence concerns the degree to which a given concept is present in both the source and target cultures, regardless of the words used to express the concept. The third main type of equivalence discussed in the research literature is normative equivalence. This form of equivalence refers to the extent to which the translated text successfully addresses the difficulties created by differences in societal rules between the source and target cultures.

Census Bureau research conducted for the development of the translation guideline showed that there is considerable evidence in the field of survey methodology and crosscultural research that translated questionnaires which lack the features noted above are not of the highest possible quality and that data obtained from such instruments may not necessarily be comparable to data collected using the source language instrument.

Adapted from <http://www.census.gov/srd/papers/pdf/rsm2005-06.pdf> Acesso em 20 nov. 2013)

What are the “aforementioned criteria” in the second paragraph?