The Linguist

@CIOL_Linguists SUMMER 2024 The Linguist 17 FEATURES respond in the expected way to questions. The final phase refers to systematic tracking of documentation and translated versions to ensure transparency and allow other people, including language professionals, to examine the original questionnaire and its translation, and provide feedback for improvement. The disadvantage of this approach, aside from complexity, is cost. 3 It is therefore only generally adopted for large-scale international assessments, such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) studies. Consequently, these guidelines are difficult to implement in full. This seems to be a two-sided problem. On the one hand, there is a need to investigate perceptions within the research community: the perceived cost of translation and the complication of involving 'non-researchers' in projects, along with an outdated belief that good-quality translation is as close as possible to the original text, if not word for word. 4 This suggests a deep misunderstanding about what translators do and the value they can bring to a study. On the other hand, there is the question of how to tackle the matter of specialist knowledge among translators and interpreters. If translators are regularly embedded in research projects, they may be better placed to develop field-specific knowledge and an understanding of research-related constraints on language. The need for multilingual research is not about to go away, nor is it limited to surveys; it also includes interviews and any form of language-based inquiry. Without translation and interpreting, people are at risk of being excluded, misinformed, disadvantaged or misunderstood. It may be tempting for researchers to turn to machine translation (MT), but while a recent study indicates that MT may not have a devastating impact on numerical results, it does show that human-led team translation outperforms machine output. 5 To be relevant, multilingual research needs to be representative, inclusive and ethical. One possible avenue towards this may be more visible cooperation between translators and interpreters and the research community. As professionals, we need to reach out to academics, while those of us working in the research community can, perhaps, raise awareness about the key role translators and interpreters can and should play in supporting multilingual research. There is also a need for specialist courses, adapted for working translators and interpreters. If both researchers and funding bodies understand the possibilities of involving professional translators and interpreters in inquiry, then there is a greater chance that including the cost of professional linguists in research bids will be seen as an investment rather than a burden. Notes 1 Behr, D (2017) 'Assessing the Use of Back Translation: The shortcomings of back translation as a quality testing method.' In International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 20,6, 573-584 2 Cross-Cultural Survey Guidelines (CCSG), Comparative Survey Design and Implementation (CSDI) Guidelines Initiative; https://ccsg.isr.umich.edu 3 Vujcich, D et al (2021) 'Translating Best Practice into Real Practice: Methods, results and lessons from a project to translate an English sexual health survey into four Asian languages.' In PLOS One, 16,12 4 Behr, D and Braun, M (2023) 'How Does Back Translation Fare Against Team Translation? An experimental case study in the language combination English-German.' In Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, 11,2, 285-315 5 Ibid. © PEXELS

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