When educational assessments and curricula are translated and adapted into other languages, it’s crucial that they continue to meet required standards and fulfill the instructional and measurement purposes for which they were intended. This is why Responsive Translation offers clients the option to integrate alignment validation into the translation and adaptation process. Our customized workflows ensure that both stakeholder and organizational needs will be met.

Imagine that a group of students has no idea what they’re supposed to be learning and their lessons have no relation to what they’re being tested on. That’s not a recipe for educational success. And it’s precisely why educational alignment is so important.

Alignment ensures that instructional strategies, assessments, learning objectives and standards are in sync, so that they can properly support and reinforce each other. Not only does this help schools to meet content and accountability requirements, it offers students more effective opportunities for learning and maximizes available educational resources. But what happens when translation enters the mix?

All students deserve the opportunity to learn and to demonstrate what they know—no matter what language they speak. Assessments and curricula that have been aligned in the original language should also be aligned in translation. Doing so helps to maintain the validity of assessments and curricula in translation. In fact, validity is just one of the psychometric properties that Responsive Translation attends to, in order to produce high-quality translations that are fair, reliable and legally defensible.

For every educational project Responsive Translation is involved in, we start by analyzing all client requirements and proposing a customized plan. And when alignment is important, we offer clients an additional alignment validation step.

Depending on your project, here’s what that might look like. A panel of experts will review the translated items or content. Panel members will be recruited based on linguistic, educational and subject matter qualifications and experience. During the review, non-aligned items or content will be flagged for further revision.

By having an alignment validation step integrated into your translation and adaptation workflow, your organization and your stakeholders can be confident that the final translation will be appropriately aligned and able to fulfill its purpose.

Your Partner in Education

Responsive Translation is an experienced provider of high-stakes translation, adaptation, validation and review for education. To discuss your alignment requirements, or receive more information about Responsive Translation’s range of foreign-language services for education, please get in touch at 646-847-3309 or [email protected].