Cross-Linguistic Screening
Screening that survives the language it's given in.
Exploratory work on developmental screening across the many languages and dialects families actually speak, where a translated instrument is not the same instrument.
Context
Multilingual populations
Risk addressed
Language mistaken for delay
Approach
Adaptation, not translation
Stage
Exploratory
01Translation is not adaptation
Many developmental instruments were designed and normed in one language and cultural setting. Translating the words does not carry over what the items were measuring, and it does not carry over the norms they were scored against.
In a multilingual setting this creates a specific and serious failure mode: a child assessed in a language they are still acquiring can present as delayed when they are not.
02What we are exploring
Which items in a battery are robust across languages and which are effectively language tests in disguise.
How to record the language context of an assessment as part of the record, so a later reader knows what conditions a score was produced under.
This is at an early stage. We are describing the problem we intend to work on, not a capability we currently have.
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