16:18 Nov 22, 2009 

Yes the comment on "bump/hit/bang" is enlightening and the discussion on back-translation is quite interesting.
However, if I may, it seems that one should pay attention to the actual question and to the supplied text fragment, which does a pretty job good as far as providing context (thanks, Elizabeth Lyons). The "hit" element is present in the expression "chocar con el piso", whereas the question addresses a fragment of another expression, namely "pegarse con algo" (same as "agarrarse con algo"). Keeping one’s focus on the actual question and on the given text, "o pegarse con algo" clearly suggests an alternative to "hit the floor". It even supplies examples of objects that could be grasped, such as a chair or a staircase (maybe a bad translation of "banister"?).

09:22 Nov 22, 2009 

The problem is that in English we don't normally bump/hit/bang ourselves on or against things; we bump/hit/bang our head/elbow/back on or against things, or else we trip over or bump into them.

03:21 Nov 22, 2009 

Muriel, you are right, of course. But I still want to know what the original text is and then back-translate more literally as I judge appropriate. This is for my purposes. In fact, the bt has typos and missing accents and I usually point those out - but it depends on the client too. I have had clients come back and demand that I change my bt to match the source. It all depends on the parameters of the project ...

01:16 Nov 22, 2009 

When I do a back-translation, I don't try very hard to imagine what the original was. I think the client is better served by a fairly literal translation. If the client knows enough to request a back-translation, then they know it's unlikely to match perfectly. The client is not looking for similarity. A reasonably literal translation shows them what the foreign text is going to look like to the foreign reader, whereas a highly idiomatic one might gloss over some problems in the foreign text.

00:58 Nov 22, 2009 

Joseph, thank you. It is indeed quite similar, but unlikely the source as this is a US project. But, it does show one possible phrasing -- many thanks for the citation.

00:48 Nov 22, 2009 

I've found:

" "(H)ow many times have you fallen all the way down to the floor or ground, or fallen and hit an object like a chair or stair, in the past 3 months?" ..."

It looks a lot like your translated sentence but also differs ... just offering it for your consideration.

Here's a link to where this probably appears, although I'm not sure if you can get into the article:

http://psychsocgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/ab...

23:34 Nov 21, 2009 

Given the overall language used in the forward translation, there is a fair amount of slang. I have back-translated many validated instruments like this and rarely find slang. Therefore, I myself want to know/extrapolate what the formal, source English phrasing was before I decide how to handle the most faithful rendition of the forward translation, in my back-translation.

21:07 Nov 21, 2009 

To clarify further, while I can get the gist of the phrase in the back-translation, I am trying to imagine the way it was phrased originally in the English validated survey, i.e., the formal expression of it in English/US.