Translating Oral Health-Related Quality of Life Measures: Are There Alternative Methodologies?

Translating existing sociodental indicators to another language involves a rigorous methodology, which can be costly. Free-of-charge online translator tools are available, but have not been evaluated in the context of research involving quality of life measures. To explore the value of using online translator tools to develop oral health-related quality of life measures using the Chinese language as an example. Six online translating tools were employed to translate the original English versions of two sociodental indicators to traditional Chinese, and then back-translate them to English. Two health-professional bilingual translators were consulted to check for the accuracy of the Chinese version produced. The online tools provided literal translations into Chinese with no grammatical coherence for most of the questions, which could potentially have a detrimental effect on the translated version produced as a culturally relevant and psychometrically sound instrument. The two translators did a content-validation exercise on each version of the questions provided by the tools, which were then independently compared to the translations currently in use. As a free-of-charge translator, the tools cannot be used at face value, particularly with languages that are not alphabet-based such as Chinese. They ought to be complemented by a content validation exercise still having minimal impact on resources. This method can be useful in languages that do not yet have a translated version of a given health measurement. The measure produced should still be tested for its psychometric properties in the target language.