Survey translation has developed best practice procedures to translate survey
instruments aiming that the same stimuli and measurement properties should be
provided. However, it is very difficult to check in a systematic way these requirements.
Current procedures in translation assessment do not link the quality of the translation
with a formal test of measurement equivalence. In addition, monitoring the formal
structure of translated questionnaires in cross-sectional surveys is challenging. This
paper presents a procedure to prevent differences in the form of translated survey
instruments using Survey Quality Prediction program (SQP). SQP asks users to code a
large set of properties of a survey item. Deviations in translations are detected by
comparing the codes of a source questionnaire and targeted languages. The paper
summarizes the findings of this procedure implemented in a set of items in the Round
5 of the European Social Survey (ESS).