The Skills System handouts are currently available in English, Swedish, Icelandic, Dutch and Korean. The entire book has been translated into Dutch.
The following steps we taken by a team in Sweden to translate the Skills System handouts into Swedish. They did an amazing job with this challenging project and kindly shared the steps they took to execute this achievement. If you are interested in facilitating a translation, please feel free to contact me about this process.
Step 1
Hightlighting a need: The process started with that Pernilla Schultz, RN encountered multiple DBT-clients with cognitives challenges. Faced with the difficulties of providing the treatment for these clients, Schultz searched for materials that could be helpful. This inevidently led her to Dr. Browns work.
Step 2
Swedish being a small language, Schultz soon realized that the material was not translated, or was in process of being so. Thus Schultz started to convert the work sheets from Guildford Press so that she could use it with her native Swedish speaking clients.
Step 3
Dr. Sofie Westling, and Dr. Lena Nylander, affiliated with the psychiatric services in Lund Sweden and Lund University became involved in the process. Dr. Westling, Dr. Nylander, and Schultz wrote an email to Dr. Brown inquiring about doing a more official/formal translation of the material.
Step 4
Dr. Brown contacted Guilford Press and introduced the Swedish team to the person at Guilford that deals with foreign translations.
Step 5
Funding and support was provided by the Swedish National Self Harm Project, facilitating the more formal translation of Dr. Browns material.
Step 6
Dr. Westling, Dr. Nylander, and Schultz wrote a letter to Dr. Brown outlining the project and requesting formal approval to use the images. Dr. Brown happily agreed!
Step 7
The group considered bringing in formal translators but decided to complete the translation themselves. However, Schultz, Westling and Nylander determined that a clinical background was necessary to understand the content and translate it appropriately. Additionally, one of Schultz’s clients was consulted to find the appropriate language and terms in the material. Shultz then used the online versions of the work sheets from Guilford’s website and did the translations through Word. She then transformed them into PDFs. (Pernilla is amazing!)
Step 8
Once the Swedish draft was complete, the Swedish team meet via GoToMeeting with Dr. Brown to review the handouts. There were a few interesting cultural nuances that had to be addressed together to be sure both the clinicians and Dr. Brown were satisfied with the solutions.
Step 9
The team is currently making the edits.
Step 10
The team will submit the Swedish handouts to Guilford Press. They have someone there who speaks Swedish, who will grant final approval. Hopefully then we are good to go!
Thank you all,
Julie