 |
| World War I era poster in Yiddish to encourage food conservation. Caption (translated) "Food will win the war - You came here seeking freedom, now you must help to preserve it - Wheat is needed for the allies - waste nothing." Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons |
As social science researchers, we have to routinely work
across language barriers with our respondents.
It is highly likely that the native language of a researcher
(Urdu in my case) may be different from the respondents’. Great care is taken to
simplify questionnaires so that they can be translated into the local language with
minimal difficulty. The hiring of translators is also considered to be a high
priority task in the research process and their proficiency in the local
language is a deciding factor. Effective translation can play an important role
in mitigating the language barrier between a researcher and a respondent. For
this to happen, a translator should be well trained in the research process.
Some people might argue that it is not necessary to train translators, and that
their job is to simply ‘translate.’ But well trained translators not only understand
the value of questions in the overall research process, they also experiment
with different ways to get the respondent to understand the questions. The
ownership and motivation of translators arise only when they are fully immersed
into the research process. In my own involvement in the design and translation
of an anthropometric training for a LANSA study
on women’s work and nutrition in Sindh, I leveraged on my understanding of the
study while translating some key concepts to the participants.
The nature of research also plays a critical role in the
interplay between the interview and translation processes. For instance, in
qualitative research our reliance on the translator increases and the process seems
complex at first. As researchers, we not only need to identify the subtle
nuances which are being voiced out by the respondent, but also need to ensure that
objectivity is being maintained throughout the interview. In quantitative
surveys in which answers are mostly binary, or the questions deal with numeric
responses, we tend to get familiar with the local terminologies being used in
the questions and this barrier tends to fade away as the frequency of
interviews increases.
How the community responds to the language barrier between a
researcher and a respondent is perhaps worthy to note. Often male relatives
consider it as an opportunity to step in when females are being interviewed.
During my attempt to interview women in rural Sindh, men would say, ‘Our women
don’t speak your language. You can converse with us. We will answer on their behalf
since we know Urdu very well.’ Knowing Urdu is often perceived as a source of
pride and most of the men attribute it to their mobility to the cities where
they interact with people who speak multiple languages, especially Urdu.
The close relationship between caste and language is quite pronounced
in rural communities. Throughout my fieldwork in Sindh, I have learnt that it
is not a question of class; rather it is the affiliation with a particular
caste that determines the language(s) spoken by communities. The Solangis and Mir Bahars for example, speak a common language – Sindhi - whereas
the Lunds and Rinds speak Balochi. Upon learning that I do not belong to a particular
caste, a respondent’s relative said, ‘You will never be able to speak Sindhi!’
For a researcher, it is much more convenient to interview
respondents in the same language that the researcher speaks. The challenge,
then, is building connections with a community beyond the basis of a shared language.
Drawing out valuable insights from the conversation and talking about them with
the respondent can create a meaningful field experience for a researcher who is
not so well versed in a local language.
