Alexithymia represents a personality trait construct encompassing difficulty identifying and describing feelings, distinguishing between feelings and the related physical sensations, and an externally oriented cognition. A self-report 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) is a commonly used tool to measure alexithymia. It has been translated into more than 20 different languages, crossing the cultural and language barriers. TAS-20 has a factorial structure: factor 1 assesses difficulty identifying feelings; factor 2 assesses difficulty describing feelings; factor 3 assesses externally oriented thinking.

The objective of the study was to validate a Serbian translation, including the factorial structure, of the TAS-20.

TAS-20 was expertly translated from English to Serbian and given to a bilingual non-clinical sample fluent in both English and Serbian (n=47, age 18-60). The subjects were assigned to complete Serbian version (TAS-20-SRB) at week one, and the English version (TAS-20-ENG) at week two (7-14 days apart). The collected data were analysed using a paired samples correlations and paired samples t-test.

There were no statistically significant differences in paired samples comparisons of means of total score and scores on each of three factors of TAS-20-ENG and TAS-20-SRB (p>0.05). The results of correlations of total scores and scores on factors show the statically significant correlations (p< 0.001), and also that the correlations were very high (from 0.87 to 0.95).

Bilingual subjects showed temporally and quantitatively congruent scores on both TAS-20 and TAS-20-SRB, suggesting that the Serbian translation of TAS-20 was valid, and that the factorial structure remained stable.