de Wet Anneliese, Dowling Tessa, Swartz Leslie, Lesch Anthea, Kagee Ashraf, Kafaar Zuhayr, Hassan Neil R, Newman Peter A
Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa.
African Languages, School of Languages & Literatures, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Glob Public Health. 2020 Jun;15(6):818-827. doi: 10.1080/17441692.2020.1718736. Epub 2020 Jan 29.
In multilingual societies, where researchers and participants often do not speak the same language, research is a challenge as a mismatch of understanding between researchers, research instruments and participants often occurs. Reporting on the translation process is crucial because of the potential implications for the validity of the data that follow from it. We aimed to report on the complexities of such a translation process and many considerations that came to our attention. Methodologically, we used a detailed case study to demonstrate that the complexity of translation might be underestimated by researchers who may neglect to report on the challenges that they experience to benefit the wider research community. We emphasise that translating documents, particularly between languages that are not cognate, requires time and financial resources that researchers often do not anticipate or plan for. By discussing what happened to texts that were translated, and how we as researchers were challenged by considerations that were primarily linguistic but also straddled cultural and socio-political domains, we hope to encourage a deeper understanding of the translation task. We conclude that consideration of these complexities is necessary if the aim is the development of translated documents which complement the researchers' goals.
在多语言社会中，研究人员和参与者往往说不同的语言，研究是一项挑战，因为研究人员、研究工具和参与者之间常常出现理解不匹配的情况。由于翻译过程对后续数据有效性的潜在影响，报告翻译过程至关重要。我们旨在报告这种翻译过程的复杂性以及引起我们注意的诸多考量因素。在方法上，我们通过一个详细的案例研究来表明，研究人员可能会低估翻译的复杂性，他们可能忽视报告自己所经历的挑战，而这些挑战本可为更广泛的研究群体带来益处。我们强调，翻译文件，尤其是在非同源语言之间进行翻译，需要时间和资金资源，而研究人员往往没有预料到或对此进行规划。通过讨论翻译文本的情况，以及作为研究人员的我们如何受到主要是语言方面但也跨越文化和社会政治领域的考量因素的挑战，我们希望能促进对翻译任务有更深入的理解。我们得出结论，如果目标是开发与研究人员目标相辅相成的翻译文件，那么考虑这些复杂性是必要的。
