2.9.5 Step 5: Translation into Afrikaans
As English and Afrikaans are the only mediums of instruction for occupational therapy university education across South Africa, potential participants would be expected to be competent in at least one of these languages, and thus familiar with the terms and concepts used. The questionnaire was therefore translated into Afrikaans to ensure that the occupational therapy respondents would not be discriminated against by written language. The following steps were taken:
  1. The first author (bilingual in these languages) completed the initial translation from English to Afrikaans.
  2. The initial translation was checked for grammatical errors by two independent Afrikaans-first-language peers identified by the first author. Where errors were identified, corrections were made.
  3. One expert in the validation phase of the survey, an Afrikaans-first-language speaker, who was already familiar with the English version was requested to comment on the Afrikaans version. Further grammatical and terminological corrections were made to produce the final Afrikaans version of the survey.