If your test publishing company is developing assessments in English, you may be leaving money on the table if you’re not also producing assessments in Spanish.
What Is Test Publishing?
Test publishing is all about creating, producing and delivering assessments in order to measure students or test takers’ performance or progress. This includes developing content, writing test items and formatting them for printing or digital distribution. Once the assessments are complete, they can be administered to students as paper forms or through online platforms.
Yet, students and test takers in the United States aren’t exclusively English speaking. In fact, some of them may not speak English at all.
Why Publish Assessments in Spanish?
According to the latest census data, there were more than 41 million people in the United States who spoke Spanish as their primary language. This makes Spanish the most commonly spoken language in the country after English.
Some Spanish speakers are Spanish-English bilingual, but others aren’t, which is why a number of Spanish speakers feel more comfortable taking an assessment in their primary language, rather than in English. In fact, many educational institutions, businesses and other organizations are becoming increasingly aware of this and wish to cater to this growing audience.
Publishing assessments in Spanish will allow your test publishing company to grow its revenues and its market share. This means translating and adapting existing assessments, or developing new assessments directly in Spanish.
Sourcing the Right Expertise
With your company’s expertise in test publishing, you may be wondering how feasible it is to build an in-house team dedicated to producing Spanish assessments. In most cases, however, it’s actually more cost effective to partner with Responsive Translation.
For more than 30 years, Responsive Translation has been helping test publishing companies and compliance-intensive businesses to build bridges and bring their expertise to new audiences and new markets.
While there are few companies equipped to support test publishing companies, there are even fewer who follow International Testing Commission guidelines and work to ensure psychometric integrity like we do.
Your Partner for Producing Assessments in Spanish
Responsive Translation specializes in supporting test publishing companies. Our services include translation, adaptation, validation and review of assessments in more than 80 languages, as well as foreign-language item development and authentic passage review. To learn more, please get in touch at [email protected] or 1-800-872-6752 (+1-212-818-1102 outside the US).