The CRISP Translation Guide for Research-Reporting Guidelines

Primary care is a worldwide undertaking across nations and languages. CRISP-Consensus Reporting Items for Studies in Primary Care-is a research-reporting guideline developed by and for primary care. Originally created in English, CRISP can build global research capacity and support the reporting, dissemination, and application of primary care research findings. No widely accepted procedure exists for translating research-reporting guidelines, so we developed an explicit guide to translating documents into various languages. We synthesized available guidance with the aim of creating a practical, low-cost workflow for use by international teams of primary care colleagues. The resulting CRISP Translation Guide specifies the documents, team membership and expertise, and process for translation. It outlines a 5-step procedure: (1) translate from source into target language, (2) read in the target language to confirm practical function in context, (3) back-translate into source language, (4) confirm fidelity with the original authors of the source document, and (5) identify and resolve any concerns with the team. All team members are content experts. The translators for steps 1 and 3 are bilingual. The reader in step 2 is a target document user. Each step is a dialog. Translation teams are formally recognized but usually not considered authors. Translated documents include original citations and copyright notices. Using this guide, teams have translated the CRISP Checklist and related documents into Chinese, German, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and Turkish. Other languages are pending. The CRISP Translation Guide can facilitate the translation of research-reporting guidelines and related documents to support the worldwide dissemination and application of primary care research results. The guide can be applied to other documents as well.