Achieving Linguistic Clarity: A Model to Aid Translations

Abstract

An international validation study of selected NANDA nursing diagnoses prompted the development of a linguistic model for standardizing and operationalizing the defining characteristics. The translation of NANDA-approved defining characteristics into Portuguese illuminated problems related to the way that sentences, phrases, and words are used. Defining characteristics were reduced into the simplest linguistic components—words. In Portuguese translation, all of the major NANDA-defining characteristics were classified into two alphabetized lists as single-word phenomena/states or qualifiers. Linguistic standardization permitted similar expressions of the defining characteristics in Portuguese and English.

Keywords

linguistic model translation

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Beyea

(1990). Concept analysis of feeling: A human response pattern. Nursing Diagnosis, 1, 7–101.

Grant

Kinney

(1991). The need for operational definitions for defining characteristics. Nursing Diagnosis, 2, 181–185.

Haugen

(1975). Linguistics and language planning. In Bright

(Ed.), Sociolinguistics. Paris: Mouton & Co.

Merriam-Webster, Inc . (1971). Webster's seventh new collegiate dictionary. Springfield, MA: Author.

North American Nursing Diagnosis Association . (1992). NANDA nursing diagnoses: definitions and classification. Philadelphia, PA: Author.

Osgood

May

Miron

(1978). Cross-cultural universals of affective meaning. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Palermo

(1978). The psychology of language. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman & Co.

Walker

Avant

(1988). Strategies for theory construction in nursing. Norwalk, CT: Appleton and Lange.