Validity of the Chinese Version of the Person-Environment Apathy Rating (PEAR-C) for Persons With Dementia

Apathy is a prevalent neurobehavioral symptom in dementia. Despite that environmental stimulation plays a key role in apathy, it is often overlooked in assessment. The Person-Environment Apathy Rating (PEAR) scale is currently the only validated apathy scale for persons with dementia that addresses environmental stimulation and is only available in English. This project translated the PEAR scale into Mandarin Chinese and evaluated its content validity. The PEAR scale includes two subscales: PEAR-Environment and PEAR-Apathy. Each subscale includes six items. The PEAR scale translation and validation were conducted through a four-step process. First, the PEAR scale was translated from English into Chinese by two bilingual PhD-prepared researchers. Second, the two Chinese versions of PEAR (PEAR-C) were back-translated into English by another two bilingual PhD-prepared researchers. Third, three content experts reviewed the two translated scales and reconciled a final PEAR-C scale. Finally, these three experts individually rated the PEAR-C and evaluated its content validity item-by-item in two aspects: 1) content equivalence: appropriateness to use this scale in Chinese cultural setting, and 2) semantic equivalence: the scale remains the same meaning after translation. The content validity index (CVI) was calculated to sum the ratings across experts. The CVI of content equivalence for all items was 1.0 for both subscales. The CVI of semantic equivalence was 0.98 for the PEAR-Environment and 0.97 for the PEAR-Apathy. The PEAR-C shows substantial content validity. Its reliability and construct validity need further evaluation. This scale is promising to assess apathy for individuals with dementia in the Chinese-speaking community.

Client Service Receipt Inventory as a standardised tool for measurement of socio-economic costs in the rare genetic disease population (CSRI-Ra)

The measurement of costs is fundamental in healthcare decision-making, but it is often challenging. In particular, standardised methods have not been developed in the rare genetic disease population. A reliable and valid tool is critical for research to be locally meaningful yet internationally comparable. Herein, we sought to develop, contextualise, translate, and validate the Client Service Receipt Inventory for the RAre disease population (CSRI-Ra) to be used in cost-of-illness studies and economic evaluations for healthcare planning. Through expert panel discussions and focus group meetings involving 17 rare disease patients, carers, and healthcare and social care professionals from Hong Kong, we have developed the CSRI-Ra. Rounds of forward and backward translations were performed by bilingual researchers, and face validity and semantic equivalence were achieved through interviews and telephone communications with focus group participants and an additional of 13 healthcare professional and university students. Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to assess criterion validity between CSRI-Ra and electronic patient record in a sample of 94 rare disease patients and carers, with overall ICC being 0.69 (95% CI 0.56–0.78), indicating moderate to good agreement. Following rounds of revision in the development, contextualisation, translation, and validation stages, the CSRI-Ra is ready for use in empirical research. The CSRI-Ra provides a sufficiently standardised yet adaptable method for collecting socio-economic data related to rare genetic diseases. This is important for near-term and long-term monitoring of the resource consequences of rare diseases, and it provides a tool for use in economic evaluations in the future, thereby helping to inform planning for efficient and effective healthcare. Adaptation of the CSRI-Ra to other populations would facilitate international research.

Cross-Cultural Modification Strategies for Instruments Measuring Health Beliefs About Cancer Screening: Systematic Review

Background Modification is an important process by which to adapt an instrument to be used for another culture. However, it is not fully understood how best to modify an instrument to be used appropriately in another culture. Objective This study aims to synthesize the modification strategies used in the cross-cultural adaptation process for instruments measuring health beliefs about cancer screening. Methods A systematic review design was used for conducting this study. Keywords including constructs about instrument modification, health belief, and cancer screening were searched in the PubMed, Google Scholar, CINAHL, and PsycINFO databases. Bowling’s checklist was used to evaluate methodological rigor of the included articles. Results were reported using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) approach with a narrative method. Results A total of 1312 articles were initially identified in the databases. After removing duplications and assessing titles, abstracts, and texts of the articles, 18 studies met the inclusion criteria for the study. Based on Flaherty’s cultural equivalence model, strategies used in the modification process included rephrasing items and response options to achieve semantic equivalence; changing subjects of items, changing wording of items, adding items, and deleting items to achieve content equivalence; adding subscales and items and deleting subscales and items to achieve criterion equivalence. Solutions used to resolve disagreements in the modification process included consultation with experts or literature search, following the majority, and consultation with the author who developed the scales. Conclusions This study provides guidance for researchers who want to modify an instrument to be used in another culture. It can potentially give cross-cultural researchers insight into modification strategies and a better understanding of the modification process in cross-cultural instrument adaptation. More research could be done to help researchers better modify cross-cultural instruments to achieve cultural equivalence.

Motivation of Word Formation in Russian and Arabic Languages and its Role in Achieving Translation Equivalence

The article is devoted to the issue of word-formation motivation, which does not lose its relevance and plays a role not only in disclosing formal-semantic relations between words of one language and has not only theoretical, but also applied significance. The authors consider word-formation motivation consistently in its varieties in a comparative way on the materials of so different languages as Russian and Arabic and approach the mechanism of achieving semantic equivalence of translation. To the greatest extent, word-formation activity today, due to objective reasons, affects some special branch (technical, medical, etc.) vocabulary, which is increasing from year to year in national dictionaries. This extensive material, selected by the authors, not only illustrates the current trends in word formation in modern languages, but also provides an answer to the question about the degree of equivalence of this subgroup of words in Russian and Arabic. The goal to compare word-formation motivation according to a number of criteria in different-structured languages made possible not only to obtain theoretical information about what features each of the languages has in word formation and what derivational potential it has, but also to reveal an algorithm for translating derived words from one language to another. For this, the authors complete a number of such particular tasks as highlighting significant elements in the neologisms of the Russian and Arabic languages, establishing standards for the formation of scientific and terminological vocabulary in Arabic, searching for tools (transformation operations, specific word-formation formants) that will contribute to the achievement of translation equivalence from Russian to Arabic, etc. Also the analysis of differences in the mechanisms of the formation of new vocabulary in the Russian and Arabic languages provided an opportunity to supplement the relatively young and rapidly developing private methodology of Russian-Arabic translation.

GRAMMATICAL EQUIVALENCE IN THE FRENCH TRANSLATIONS OF CATULLUS 5 «TO LESBIA»

The article examines the phenomenon of grammatical equivalence based on the Latin poem «To Lesbia» by Catullus and its French translations of the XVI-XXI centuries. The research reveals that the sequence of certain grammatical structures in Catullus 5 plays a significant role in revealing the author's message addressed to Lesbia. In the article we present a brief analysis of the structure of this Latin poem with an emphasis on the role of conjunctive, gerund, imperative and constructions with the sequence of tenses and moods in the author's speech. Given the importance of grammatical structures of the Latin poem for the expression of the author's intentions, their adequate rendition in translations facilitates the achievement of grammatical and semantic equivalence while also helping the translator to convey the message accurately. We have found out that French translations of Catullus 5 mainly reproduce the grammatical meanings of the original poem, often expressing them in other grammatical structures and forms. Some translations retain the architectonics of the poem, using direct grammatical equivalents of the Latin original, while others render the grammatical structure of the poem by equivalent French grammatical constructions. Further studies in this area could focus on the research of grammatical equivalence in poetic translations with the use of corpus linguistic methods.

On Semantic Equivalence, In Translations of the Book of Proverbs: A Case Study

The topic of this paper covers one of the mysterious and fascinating topics of biblical study, specifically biblical proverbs. The paper is primarily devoted to outlining translation equivalents of semantic parallelism across two languages – English and Armenian. By employing the method of comparing cultural values, are outlined the architecture of semantic parallelism and the role of translator as an agent of cultural mediation in regard to translation of biblical proverbs.

A. H. Tammsaare’s Epic Musicality

A. H. Tammsaare was drawn to the musical tonality of prose. Importantly though, he did not wholeheartedly embrace sound patterning as a mode of writing. Rather, he preferred a semantic widening of ordinary language within a comprehensively holistic “spherical music”. In his novels, we can detect a deliberate use of rhythmic motion in sentences. This is evident primarily in the wealth of lexical and syntactic repetitions resulting in a parallelism of patterns. An obvious, although discreet, rhythmic design emerges in the thesisantithesis- synthesis parataxis the core words of which are the adversative and coordinating conjunctions aga (‘but’), and integrative ometi (‘yet’, ‘indeed’). The frequency with which these bound conjunctions occur in Tammsaare’s work surpasses that of ordinary speech by about four times, and it is twice as high as the statistical mean for literary texts. One might call this expressive of an epic but-mantra, a prose-poetic but-meter, or a narrative polysyndeton, and, from a philosophical point of view, a but-dialectic. Whenever a reader fails to appreciate Tammsaare’s underlying tone and does not discern the emotional flow of longing scepticism that issues from his dyadic-triadic chains, this pervasive, yet inconspicuously arguing, textual mode may seem unduly pretentious. Indeed, there is nothing to prevent a prose text from featuring a poetic style that is rooted in a poetry-like, paradigmatic parallelism as the poetic principle of formal and semantic equivalence.

Development of the Japanese Version of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Dictionary 2015 (J-LIWC2015)

The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Dictionary 2015 (LIWC2015) is a standard text analysis dictionary that quantifies linguistic/psychometric properties of English words. The development of a Japanese version of the LIWC2015 dictionary (J-LIWC2015) has been expected in the fields of natural language processing and cross-cultural research. This study aims to create J-LIWC2015 through systematic investigations of the original dictionary and Japanese corpora. All words in the LIWC2015 dictionary were initially subjected to human and machine translation into Japanese. After verifying the frequency of use of the words in large corpora, frequent words and phrases that are unique to Japanese were added to the dictionary, followed by re-category assignments by psychologists. The updated dictionary indicated good internal consistency, semantic equivalence with the original LIWC2015 dictionary, and good construct validity in each category. The evidence suggests that the J-LIWC2015 dictionary is a powerful research tool in computational social science to scrutinize psychological processes behind Japanese texts and to promote standardized cross-cultural investigations in combination with the LIWC dictionaries in different languages.

Traducción y adaptación transcultural al español del Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (Translation and cross-cultural adaptation to Spanish of the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire)

La Realidad Virtual (RV) es una herramienta cada vez más presente en la valoración y tratamiento del paciente neurológico. Sin embargo, en ocasiones, la exposición a entornos inmersivos puede desencadenar efectos adversos. Detectar las posibles complicaciones de su uso se antoja fundamental para dotar de seguridad a sus aplicaciones terapéuticas. El objetivo de este trabajo ha sido realizar una traducción y adaptación transcultural del cuestionario Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ), empleado para valorar el cybersickness o sintomatología adversa asociada al uso de la RV, de cara a minimizar riesgos vinculados a su uso en población española. Se llevó a cabo una traducción, retrotraducción y adaptación del instrumento original y una validación de contenido y equivalencia semántica del cuestionario a través de la opinión de expertos, llegando a una versión preliminar evaluada en un ensayo piloto con 54 participantes. Tras la obtención de la versión preliminar en español, el análisis de validez de contenido mostró valores elevados (índice de validez de contenido ³ 0.89; valores de kappa ³ 0.89). 42 de los 54 participantes en el estudio (78%) entendieron el total de la equivalencia semántica planteada y el 100% de la muestra comprendió 13 de los 16 ítems adaptados (81%). El proceso de traducción y adaptación transcultural al castellano del SSQ llevado a cabo, ha dado como resultado una versión equivalente al cuestionario original, presentando una elevada concordancia semántica que facilitará el desarrollo de futuros estudios en población española sobre la sintomatología adversa que pudiera generar la RV. Abstract. Virtual Reality (VR) uses is growing in the assessment and treatment of neurological patients. However, immersive environments exposure can trigger adverse effects. Checking the possible complications of its use is essential to provide security to therapeutic approaches. The aim of this work has been to carry out a translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ), used to assess cybersickness or adverse symptoms associated with VR, with the aim to decrease risks in the Spanish population. Forward-translation, back-translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the original questionnaire was carried out. Content validation and semantic equivalence was assessed by an expert panel, leading to a preliminary version evaluated in a pilot trial with 54 participants. After obtaining the preliminary version in Spanish, the content validity analysis showed high values (content validity index ³ 0.89 and kappa values ³ 0.89). 42 of the 54 participants (78%) understood the total semantic equivalence raised and 100% of the sample understood 13 of the 16 adapted items (81%). The translation and cross-cultural adaptation into Spanish of the SSQ was carried out in this study, showed an equivalent version to the original questionnaire, presenting a high semantic concordance and facilitating the development of future studies in the Spanish population on the adverse symptoms that VR could generate.