Instruments to assess children’s language and speech translated and adapted into Brazilian Portuguese: an integrative literature review

ABSTRACT Purpose: to analyze the content and translation guidelines of instruments meant to assess language, speech sound production, and communicative skills of children, adapted to Brazilian Portuguese. Methods: a search was conducted in national and international databases to select articles on the assessment of language, speech, and communicative skills in children, considering the descriptors “translation”, “adaptation”, “cultural adaptation”, “cross-cultural adaptation”, “language”, “speech”, and “pragmatic”. The search was conducted in the SciELO, Virtual Health Library, PubMed/MEDLINE, and Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature. Results: eight assessment instruments compatible with the inclusion criteria were found. Conclusion: of the instruments found, four approached specific investigations, such as syntax, narrative, pragmatic skills, and speech sound organization, while the other four had a more encompassing profile, verifying form, content, and/or use (pragmatics). Concerning the guidelines, the most recurrent stages between the translation proposals were translation, conciliation of the previous stage or synthesis version, back-translation, reviewing committee, pretest, and final version. The conceptual, item and operational equivalences were frequently cited for verification.

摘要 目的：分析适配巴西葡萄牙语的、用于评估儿童语言、语音发音及沟通技能的评估工具的内容与翻译指南。方法：以“翻译（translation）”“适配（adaptation）”“文化适配（cultural adaptation）”“跨文化适配（cross-cultural adaptation）”“语言（language）”“语音（speech）”“语用（pragmatic）”为检索词，在国内及国际数据库中检索有关儿童语言、语音及沟通技能评估的文献。检索覆盖的数据库包括SciELO、虚拟健康图书馆（Virtual Health Library）、PubMed/MEDLINE以及拉丁美洲与加勒比地区健康科学文献数据库（Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature）。结果：共筛选出符合纳入标准的评估工具8项。结论：在所获评估工具中，4款聚焦于特定维度的评估，涵盖句法、叙事、语用技能及语音组织；剩余4款覆盖范围更广，可对工具形式、内容及/或使用场景（语用学）进行验证。关于翻译指南，各翻译方案中最常见的流程步骤依次为：原文翻译、前一阶段成果协调或合成版本、回译（back-translation）、评审委员会审核、预试验（pretest）及最终版本定稿；研究中频繁提及需验证概念等效性、条目等效性及操作等效性。