In this paper we report on the process of translating five mental health outcome measures into Spanish and adapting them to Latino culture. The instruments considered are the World Health Organization-Disability Assessment Scale, the Burden Assessment Scale, the Family Burden Scale, Lehman's Quality of Life Interview and the Continuity of Care in Mental Health Services Interview. A systematic process of translation and adaptation of the instruments was followed with the goal of achieving cultural equivalence between the English and Spanish versions of the instruments in five dimensions: semantic, content, technical, construct, and criterion equivalence. In this paper we present data about the semantic, content, and technical equivalence. Various steps were taken to achieve equivalence in these dimensions, including the use of a bilingual committee, a multi-national bilingual committee, back-translation, and focus groups with mental health patients and their relatives.