As the cultural and ethnic diversity of the student population rises within school districts across the nation, the matter of translating materials in a language that is understandable and meaningful to the target population becomes more pressing. There are multitude of problems inherent in translation of materials from one language to another. To eliminate some of the inherent problems in the translation of materials, school professionals should consider the following characteristics: (a) semantic equivalence; (b) conceptual equivalence; and (c) content equivalence. These concepts influence the outcome of translations and they have a dramatic effect on culturally competent translation. In this article, the author discusses the utilization of translation and back-translation method in achieving semantic equivalence.