Turkish Translation of “ICS Good Urodynamic Practices and Terms, 2016” Document and the Ten Published “ICS Teaching Modules” are now available on the ICS Web Site.
Urodynamic studies as the gold standard physiological testing of the lower urinary tract still lack the best clinical practice because many of the urodynamic studies performed all over the world cannot reach the ICS standards. Therefore, improving the quality of urodynamic practice worldwide remains to be one of the main goals of ICS. The basic step to achieve this goal is to make all “urodynamicists” speak the same “urodynamic language”. For this purpose, ICS has been producing standardization documents on the terminology, utilisation and interpretation of urodynamic procedures. Likewise, several ICS teaching modules have focused on the application of urodynamic studies on different disease conditions of the lower urinary tract. All of these documents can be reached via ICS web page by the ICS members and all healthcare professionals around the world and the related publications can be read on Neurourology & Urodynamics. Still, language difference can act as a barrier for many non-English speaking health-care workers to apply the ICS recommendations into their urodaynamic practice. In this manner, national continence or urodynamic societies may collaborate with ICS and translate the ICS documents to their native languages. I believe the translation process described below can be a helpful example or guide for the national societies.
Two years ago, the Turkish Continence Society (TCS) decided to translate all published ICS teaching modules and the “ICS good urodynamic practices and terms, 2016” document to Turkish language. For this purpose, the TCS established a working group of 5 experienced academic physicians in the field with good English skills to run the project. The project was approved by ICS and the copyright permissions for the non-profit use of the all documents were granted from Wiley as they were published in Neurourology & Urodynamics.
The translation process differed between teaching modules and the “ICS good urodynamic practices and terms, 2016” and included very meticulous work:
- Firstly, we tried to choose the best professional medical English translation company available in Turkey among many applicants by testing them with medical sample documents to translate from English to Turkish.
- Secondly, the selected translation company translated the documents to Turkish and sent them to the TCS working group for further assessment and to do the necessary revisions.
- Then, all documents were sent back to the translation company for their approval and last check.
- Finally, all documents were checked and approved by the board of the Turkish Continence Society.
- In addition to the aforementioned process, the “ICS good urodynamic practices and terms, 2016” document in Turkish was sent to another translation group for back-translation to English.
- The back-translation was then evaluated and approved by the ICS standardization committee and the board of the ICS. So, the process was completed.
The documents in Turkish are available on the ICS web site and TCS for all Turkish speaking healthcare professionals.
Tufan Tarcan, MD, PhDPresident, Turkish Continence Society & Chair-elect, ICS Urodynamics Committee