Dear future neighbours I am sorry to use our UCOL mail for non-UCOL business, but I’m getting desperate. My work deadline for testing the wording of a questionnaire with five Dunedin / Otago residents who have MS is this Friday, and I have to do it by face-to-face visits. With our few degrees of separation in this country, I usually find people for these jobs relatively easily, but I still haven’t built up many local contacts in Dunedin, as my student friends are transient.

If you know someone, please ask them to contact me: 027 293 1983 or passionforlanguage@gmail.com as our privacy legislation means I can’t ask you for their details. They will be filling out two questionnaires but can give fake answers if they want; also, it is completely anonymous. It is not for research about their condition; it’s a preparatory step, checking the wording to see if it works.

Many thanks! Claire

P.S. If we are facebook friends, please see and share my post there.

In my work as a language validation consultant, I convert US English to New Zealand English for medical and pharmaceutical questionnaires, then test the wording with New Zealanders to see if the questions are understood in the way the clinicians intended. Sometimes I have to recruit people who live with/have been diagnosed with a specific condition; in this case, multiple sclerosis. I need to find five people who have MS and are willing to have me come to their home (or any other place that suits) and go through the questions in two questionnaires, discussing what they mean. People’s identities are never disclosed to my client or the end client, and they are not answering the questions in a way that provides data for research. We are working together to find out whether the wording of the questions is understandable and appropriate for New Zealand. This is linguistic checking, not university or medical research so it is not necessary – and in fact impossible – to organise ‘ethics approval’. This is contract work for me, and the amount I am paid includes my travel expenses and enough to compensate each participant in some way, like a voucher. I’m supposed to have the interviews completed by Friday 29th so am keen to find ‘friends of friends’ over this long weekend and set everything up. I’m attaching a letter from Mapi, the contract research organisation I’m working for on this project. Unfortunately it does not have a letterhead; they apologise and explain that it’s because they are still working out the details of a merger with Icon. (Details here: https://slator.com/ma-and-funding/icon-buys-mapi-targets-growing-language-se...)   Here’s the Wikipedia article about linguistic validation, which is what I and the five Dunedin/Otago MS people will be doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_validation Mapi’s website seems not to be working, probably also to do with the merger with Icon. Here, though, you can see some information about the work: https://careers.iconplc.com/Mapi%C2%A0 I’m one of about 600 language validation consultants/project managers around the world, apparently. I totally understand about privacy law in New Zealand and am absolutely not asking for information or names, just for people to know about me so they can contact me if they choose to. Ph: 027 293 1983  email: passionforlanguage@gmail.com    As the attached letter says, Because this questionnaire specifically addresses people suffering from Multiple Sclerosis, we would like to have the comments of people with the same condition on the wording of the questions and to know whether the questions are clear and easy to understand and if they reflect their experience correctly. According to what the patients tell us, we may modify the translation and improve it so that the people who use it later on will have no problems understanding it. The patients' opinion on the wording of the questionnaire, on the words used and on the way the questions are formulated/asked is very important to us. Because they know particularly well what it is like to live suffering from Multiple Sclerosis and the way it influences their daily life, their insight will be of great help in producing a translation that reflects the way they feel and the way they talk about their condition. In a few months, this questionnaire will be filled in by many people suffering from Multiple Sclerosis in the context of medical research. By participating now, the patients play an important role in producing a document which will be clear and easy to understand for all those who use it in the future. Please forward this to anybody you can think of who might be able to help. Thank you! Kind regards Claire Loftus Member: New Zealand Society of Translators and Interpreters  Passion for Language Ltd PO Box 6029 Dunedin North Otepoti 9059 ph: 027 293 1983