Back-translation aims to ensure quality control by?

• A. That the translation back to source matches the original meaning.
• B. Increasing sample size.
• C. Reducing the number of questions.
• D. Speeding up data collection.

Answer: (A)

Back-translation is a quality-control technique used to verify that a translated instrument preserves the meaning of the original. The process involves translating the instrument from the target language back into the source language by a translator who did not see the original, and then comparing this back-translation to the original text. If significant discrepancies appear, it signals potential issues with semantic meaning, idioms, or cultural concepts, prompting revisions to improve accuracy and equivalence. This helps ensure that questions measure the same constructs across languages, rather than just matching words. It isn't primarily about increasing sample size, reducing questions, or speeding data collection—the aim is to protect translation validity and comparability across cultural groups. In practice, back-translation is often followed by committee reviews and cognitive pretesting to address any remaining ambiguities.