Example of health research collaboration: the translation of a symptom score into Samoan

To ensure high quality health data, standardized health screening tools are used for many different kinds of health conditions. However many of these tools are in English and rely on self- reported signs and symptom information. This limits the ability of countries where English is not used in everyday communication, such as Samoa to gather comparable data that is considered valid within the academic and professional communities. Direct translation is not always an easy way to deal with the problems of meaning, as Samoan is a contextual language, with nuances affecting the interpretation of questions and thus the responses. This paper described the experiences of a collaborative team from the UK and Samoa who translated one such tool from English to Samoan; the Pelvic Organ Prolapse Symptom Score.