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JCPSLP
Volume 17, Number 1 2015
Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology
for back translation by translators who were accredited by
the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and
Interpreters (NAATI). The two translations were checked
and occasionally the original translators were asked to
clarify wording to ensure consistency. Some of the
differences have been as a result of discrepancies between
words that were accessible to parents versus words that
would be correct in an academic context. For example, two
versions of the title were possible for the Danish translation:
“Vurdering af barnets forståelighed i sine omgivelser” which
was easier for parents to understand and “Vurdering af
forståelighed i kontekst” which contained the more
academic word “kontekst” (context). Eventually, the more
parent-friendly translation was chosen and the direct
translation is: “Evaluation/assessment of the child’s
intelligibility in his/her surroundings.”
Some languages that are commonly spoken in Australia
and other parts of the world had no available speech
pathologists or linguists who could translate the ICS. So
the second way that translations were undertaken was
by translators from Australian Multi Lingual Services.
Most of the translators were NAATI accredited (e.g.,
for Gujarati, Hindi, Hmong, Karen, Khmer, Polish, and
Serbian). However, in a few cases the translators were
not accredited (e.g., for Somali and Tongan), so the third
method of translation was by non-accredited translators
employed by Australian Multi Lingual Services. The final
method of translation was undertaken when there were
available speech pathologists/linguists, but no available
translators at the Australian translation company (e.g., for
Irish, Jamaican, Sesotho, Tshivenda, isiXhosa, and isiZulu).
In these instances, translations were undertaken (and
back translated) by colleagues and other speakers of the
language as organized by the translators. For example, in
South Africa, Dr Michelle Pascoe organised translations
of the ICS in Afrikaans, Sesotho, Tshivenda, isiXhosa,
and isiZulu by working with groups of speech pathology
students studying at the University of Cape Town to
translate, back translate, and check the ICS translations
with community members. They used protocols for forward
and backward translation of health-related materials from
the World Health Organisation (2012). Their research is
continuing so that eventually translations will be available
in the remaining official languages of South Africa (i.e.,
isiNdebele, Sepedi, Setswana, SiSwati, and Xitsonga).
Research using the ICS in
languages other than English
To date, the ICS has been used with children with typically
developing speech in Slovenia (Kogovšek & Ozbiˇc, 2013),
Sweden (Lagerberg, 2013), Hong Kong (Ng, To & McLeod,
2014) and Croatia (Tomi´c & Mildner, 2014). It has been
used with typically developing multilingual children who
speak Korean and English in New Zealand (Kim, Ballard &
McCann, 2014). It has been used with children with speech
sound disorders who speak Cantonese in Hong Kong (Ng
et al., 2014) and with children with cochlear implants in
Iceland (Thoroddsen, 2014). Validiation studies have been
undertaken in Traditional Chinese/Cantonese (Ng et al.,
2014), Slovenian (Kogovšek & Ozbiˇc, 2013), and Croatian
(Tomi´c & Mildner, 2014). For example, Ng et al. (2014)
validated the Traditional Chinese version of the ICS in Hong
Kong with 72 Cantonese-speaking preschoolers (33
typically developing and 39 with speech sound disorders).
status or the number of languages spoken. There were
significant differences in ICS scores between the group of
children whose parents had concerns about their child’s
speech (
M
= 3.9) and those who did not (
M
= 4.6),
establishing criterion validity. The ICS had high internal
consistency and satisfactory test-retest reliability. Sensitivity
of .82 and specificity of .58 was established as the optimal
cut-off. In another study, McLeod, Harrison, McAllister, and
McCormack (2013) studied 109 children with speech
sound disorders and found that there was a significant
difference between ICS scores for those who had and had
not attended speech pathology services. In each of these
three studies, the children’s speech was most intelligible to
their parent, then their immediate family, and was least
intelligible to strangers.
Translation of the ICS
Over the past three years, the ICS has been translated into
60 languages (see Table 1 and Appendix) with more
translations being added regularly. There have been four
ways that translations were undertaken. First, most of the
translations were undertaken by speech pathologists and
linguists in different countries throughout the world. Typically
these people worked in university and clinical settings and
regularly worked with children with speech sound disorders
who spoke the language used in the translation. Their
translations were sent to an Australian translation company
Translators of the Intelligibility in Context Scale. L:R – Dr Karla
Washington (Jamaican), Dr Dana Buntová (Slovak), Professor
Martin Ball (Welsh), Professor Vesna Mildner (Croatian),
Professor Sharynne McLeod (English)
Articulation and Phonology (Dodd, Zhu, Crosbie, Holm &
Ozanne, 2002), establishing criterion validity. Subsequently,
the ICS was validated and normed on 804 different
Australian preschool-aged children (McLeod, Crowe, &
Shahaeian, 2014). Each of the children spoke English and
in addition, 36.9% spoke at least one of 59 other
languages. The mean ICS score for the 804 children was
4.4 (
SD
= 0.7). Significant differences in scores were
identified based on sex and age, but not socioeconomic