Translatability

All researchers translate concepts from one context to another. However, translatability usually relates to how research findings can be translated across languages. Many researchers do not attempt to question their language base. There is, however, growing interest across a range of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, sociolinguistics and translation, and interpretation studies, about the extent to which words and concepts can be translated across languages and the best ways of ensuring that meanings are carried across languages in ways that reflects possible differences in views.

Various ways for translating research accounts to ensure validity have been put forward. Some researchers argue for back translation to see if translators agree. Other researchers prefer to use professional translators or argue that community researchers who know the languages involved should be employed as they know the culture. There is controversy about the extent to which these techniques address the issues involved. Many words and concepts have no literal translation. There are many possible words that can be used in a translation. Who is doing the translating has also been shown to be important. For example, a second-generation translator may not use the source language in the same way as someone brought up speaking it. Translating from any language baseline has been shown to involve built-in cultural assumptions as translation constructs boundaries between people like the translator and others who are different. Moreover, there is no one single language community within any language. For example, people may be differentiated according to gender, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion. Both professional interpreters and community researchers translate from their own perspective and do not represent all language users and all translation positions within a language. Meanings are also not tied to and cannot be attributed to particular languages in any straightforward way. Some degree of interpretation in the wide sense of the term is needed in representing views across languages.

For reasons discussed above, researchers across disciplines are increasingly arguing that there is no one single correct translation possible. They have suggested ways of opening up texts so that the reader can see how the translation has been done and the dilemmas the translator faced in doing them. For example, the original language may be provided, concepts pulled out and the context described, arguments provided for a particular choice of word, or the context of a word that appears to have a straightforward translation discussed to show possibly different uses across languages. The perspective of the translator is important and debated using concepts such as Liz Stanley's intellectual auto/biography, which is used to define research findings as a product of the researcher, the research participant, and the context.