Bogusia Temple

Qualitative Research and Translation Dilemmas

The focus of this article is an examination of translation dilemmas in qualitative research. Specifically it explores three questions: whether methodologically it matters if the act of translation is identified or not; the epistemological implications of who does translation; and the consequences for the final product of how far the researcher chooses to involve a translator in research. Some of the ways in which researchers have tackled language difference are discussed. The medium of spoken and written language is itself critically challenged by considering the implications of similar ‘problems of method’ but in situations where the translation and interpretation issues are those associated with a visual spatial medium, in this case Sign Language. The authors argue that centring translation and how it is dealt with raises issues of representation that should be of concern to all researchers.

Interpreters/Translators and Cross-Language Research: Reflexivity and Border Crossings

In this article, the authors examine the implications of extending calls for reflexivity in qualitative research generally to cross-language research with interpreters. Drawing on the concept of ‘borders’, they present two research projects to demonstrate the need to locate the interpreter as active in producing research accounts. They extend the concept of ‘border crossing’, relating this to identity politics and the benefits of making the interpreter visible in research.

Watch Your Tongue: Issues in Translation and Cross-Cultural Research

Considering the large amount of research being undertaken in Eastern Europe and elsewhere involving the use of more than one language, there has been a remarkable silence in sociological debate about the status of this research. In this article I argue that such issues should be of concern to social scientists generally as well as to linguists. Using my own research with British-Polish communities, I raise some concerns surrounding the translation of concepts. I suggest one way of beginning to address these problematics: an opening of discussion on an analytical level with those who are often seen as mere technicians, translators and interpreters.

Contesting Cultural Communities: Language, Ethnicity and Citizenship in Britain

In recent years, the Home Office has adopted a reinvigorated policy of citizenship education and integration towards both new immigrants and settled minority ethnic communities. One of the cornerstones of this new policy is English language, which is seen as a key tool for the successful integration of Britains diverse communities. This paper is divided into two parts. Firstly, it explores the changing role of English language in the current debates around citizenship, nationhood and belonging. It argues that English language is used symbolically as a cultural boundary marker, which both defines minority ethnic ‘communities’ and excludes them from the re-imagined national ‘community’. Secondly, using empirical research from a recent study on ‘Access to Services with Interpreters’, the paper seeks to challenge the reification of national and minority versions of ‘community’ that lies at the heart of current discourses around nation and citizenship. Taking language as a key symbol of ‘community’, the paper explores the complex contours through which individual, familial, local and collective identities are lived. It concludes that minority ethnic ‘communities’ are best understood as arising out of systems of localised ‘personal’ networks which challenge reified and abstract ideas of ‘imagined communities’ and provide insights into the performance of citizenship and belonging ‘from below’.

Nice and Tidy: translation and representation

Across many disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies and sociolinguistics, writers and researchers are concerned with how language is used to construct representations of people in written and oral accounts. There is also increasing interest in cross-disciplinary approaches to language and representation in research. Within health, social care and housing research there is a rapidly growing volume of writing on, and sometimes with, people whose first language is not English. However, much empirical research in these fields remains at the level of ‘findings’ about groups of people with the issue of how they are represented remaining unexamined. In this article I discuss some of the different ways researchers have looked at issues of translation and representation across languages. As I show, some researchers have attempted to ignore or by-pass these issues in their research, some have given up the task as impossible and others have attempted the impossible. I argue that, although there can be no single ‘correct’ way for researchers to represent people who speak different languages, choices about how to do this have epistemological and ethical implications.

Narrative analysis of written texts: reflexivity in cross language research

This article examines how researchers address cross language narratives. Research and writing by migrants suggest that a change of language can lead to changes in both how people perceive themselves and how others perceive them. That is, changing language involves more than a simple change of words. However, researchers rarely consider the consequences of moving between languages in analysing and writing up narratives. This is particularly surprising for those who see narratives as contextually produced by researchers and participants and have an interest in the influence of the research process. Reflexivity is not extended to include the move across languages. I focus on some of the methodological and epistemological issues of analysing written texts produced by researchers in a language that participants did not use.

Approaches to Social Research: The Case of Deaf Studies

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Book: Its Scope and Approach Chapter 2: Definitions and Transgressions Chapter 3: Epistemology, Methodology and Method in Research with d/Deaf People Chapter 4: Ethical Research Practice in Studies Which Involve Deaf People Chapter 5: Populations and Sampling Chapter 6: Narrative, Epistemology and Language Chapter 7: Interpretation, Transcription and Translation: Representation in Research Chapter 8: The Impact of Information and Communication Technologies on Research with Deaf People Chapter 9: (in)Conclusion

Narrative methodologies: subjects, silences, re-readings and analyses

The importance of the ‘narrative turn’ is undoubted, witnessed by the mushrooming of popular as well as scholarly interest in lives and stories and the widespread academic engagement over the last few decades with the broad developments and issues covered by the term. The early observation that narrative analysis does not fit within disciplinary boundaries remains – indeed, it does not readily fit interdisciplinary ones either, although perhaps (like women’s studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies...) over time it may develop stronger boundaries and a programmatic framework. The diversity of what is happening can be indicated by reference to the varied ways that the ‘narrative turn’ has been characterized, as the confessional and reflexive dimensions of social life within modernity (Beck et al., 1994), as theories and concepts around (re)discovering notions of agency (Atkinson, 1997; Plummer, 2001), as the activities of researchers in analysing visual and oral as well as written texts (Smith and Watson, 1996, 2001), as the core element in an interpretive and constructionist methodology (Riessman, 1993; Stanley, 1992), and as specific analytical techniques, an approach or technique (Lieblich et al, 1998; Chamberlayne et al., 2000; Clandinin and Connelly, 2000). Such work mainly focuses on the social sciences, while Brockmeier and Carbaugh (2001) have more broadly indicated three main strands of developing narrative work: a literary approach to narratology and texts, an ethnographically oriented social science approach, and a Bahktinian attention to temporality and intertextuality. However, paradoxically, this excludes not only philosophical and psychoanalytical theorizations of self and identity – Brockmeier and Carbaugh’s own particular concern – but also other emergent and established approaches to narrative as well. Narrative studies presently includes a number of divergent theories, approaches and methodologies; there are interesting issues in trying to delineate A RT I C L E 275

Issues in Multi-Method Research: Constructing Self-Care

In this article, the authors examine claims that using more than one method in research automatically enhances validity. They argue that if the findings from different methods are the same this does not automatically prove the study is valid. It may show that the researchers looked only for evidence that supported the findings from one method. Complementarity of methods does not mean that different methods have to produce the same findings. That different methods work together as equal partners has to be demonstrated rather than assumed. A study of self-care in relation to people with diabetes is used to draw out some of the issues in the operationalisation of multiple method validation.

Polish Families A Narrative Approach

This article describes why the author came to use a narrative approach in research with Polish people. The author looks at the problems in defining Polish families given that defining both Polish and family is not straightforward. A narrative approach enables a researcher to evaluate such complex categorizations and the links between them. At its best, such an approach involves more than a content analysis of an interview. It entails a focus on the structure of an account and its purpose as much as on its contents to examine the context in which it is given.