A consistent empirical finding is that Scandinavian countries by international standards score steadily high in terms of subjectively reported levels of happiness and life satisfaction. Intrigued by previous findings in Denmark (Lolle and Goul Anderson in Metode Og Forskningsdesign 1:95–119, 2013, in Journal of Happiness Studies 6:1–14)), this paper confirms that this is partly due to language effects. In this paper, Sweden serves as a case study that, similar to the Danish study, seeks to determine whether it is possible to establish semantic equivalence between translated survey items. By using randomized experiments on a representative sample of Swedish citizens with fluent skills in English, we test the effects of different designs in question wordings and response scale labels implemented by international surveys. The results reveal significant differences in answers on happiness. While the mean differences are very small, the distribution of answers is substantial enough to confirm a strong semantic threshold between the English term happy the Swedish term lycklig. Hence, it requires something more to be “very happy” in Swedish than in English. Notably, language appears to have a lesser impact on the distribution of responses across language groups when using a numbered response scale with endpoint labels, indicating that a particular question design either mitigates or intensifies translational effects. Happiness, it is concluded, is not easily translated and survey practitioners should bear this caveat in mind when operationalizing the concept across countries and cultures.

一个一致的实证发现是，按照国际标准，斯堪的纳维亚国家在主观报告的幸福感和生活满意度水平方面得分稳定高。对丹麦以前的发现很感兴趣（Lolle 和 Goul Anderson in Metode og Forskningsdesign 1：95–119， 2013， in Journal of Happiness Studies 6：1–14）），本文证实这部分是由于语言效应。在本文中，瑞典作为一个案例研究，与丹麦的研究类似，旨在确定是否有可能在翻译的调查项目之间建立语义等效性。通过对具有流利英语技能的瑞典公民的代表性样本进行随机实验，我们测试了国际调查实施的问题措辞和回答量表标签中不同设计的效果。结果显示，关于幸福感的答案存在显著差异。虽然平均差异非常小，但答案的分布足够大，足以确认英语术语 happy 和瑞典语术语 lycklig 之间存在很强的语义阈值。因此，瑞典语中的“very happy”比英语中需要更多的东西。值得注意的是，当使用带有终点标签的编号响应量表时，语言对跨语言组的响应分布的影响似乎较小，这表明特定问题设计可以减轻或加强翻译效果。结论是，幸福并不容易翻译，调查从业者在跨国家和文化实施这一概念时应牢记这一警告。