A new tool to assess aphasia in Basque: key elements for the Comprehensive Aphasia Test adaptation for Basque and steps towards standardization

Abstract

In the field of aphasia research and treatment, it is necessary to take into account world language diversity, because language-specific grammatical properties condition aphasia symptom manifestations. In addition, aphasia assessment and treatment needs to be adapted to the linguistic environment of patients and their families, and in the case of bilingual individuals, the assessment should be done in both languages. Considering Europe’s language diversity and in order to carry out comparative studies and enable the assessment of bilingual people with aphasia, he Comprehensive Aphasia Test (CAT) is currently being adapted for fourteen languages, one of which is Basque. There is an urgent need in the case of Basque people with aphasia, as there is as yet no standardized language assessment tool. As a consequence, although Basque people are bilingual, they are generally only assessed in their non-Basque language. In this paper, we present the Basque adaptation of CAT, the main challenges we faced during this process, the decisions we took, and the steps perfomed to standardize the test. Based on concrete examples, we show that adapting a language assessment tool does not simply consist in translating the orginal test. Indeed, we want to emphasize that in order to create a standardized test usable in the Basque country, it is essential to take into account both psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic parameters, in addition to drawing on Basque grammar. This assessment tool will be of particular relevance to many aspects of both healthcare and research, and it will provide Basque speakers with aphasia the possibility of being assessed in their first or second language, on the basis of a standardized tool.