REVIEWING TRANSLATED SCALES: BACKTRANSLATION UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

Abstract

Linguistic validation of patient-reported outcomes is a costly and time-consuming process involving not only professional translators in the forward and backtranslation processes, but also reviewers, clinicians and project managers. Backtranslation, an essential step in this process, is used as a quality-assurance measure to detect any differences in the adaptation of crosscultural concepts and to draw attention to poorly drafted wording and blatant errors. It is the gold standard for the translation of patient-reported outcomes.The objectives of this paper are to examine and review examples of patient-reported outcomes that underwent the linguistic validation process into Portuguese and analyse them from the perspective of register, cultural adaptation, semantics, associative meaning and localisation/adaptation and to understand how effective backtranslation is at detecting any possible discrepancies.