French‐English, English‐French translation process of an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) used for licensing family physicians in quebec

Medical examinations translated into two or more languages may discriminate against one or more of the linguistic groups involved if the quality of the translations is poor or if the “medical cultures”; of the different linguistic groups are not identical. The most striking aspect of a literature review of the subject is the paucity of published reports. Over the past 3 years, the authors have gained considerable experience in translating large‐scale objective structured clinical examinations into French and English. Analysis of the examination results is described and leads to the conclusion that the translation does not discriminate against either linguistic group. The translation process developed for these examinations is presented, and hypotheses to explain the scarcity of literature on the subject are developed.