| "I'm not sure I know what you mean." This is a common refrain in cross-cultural communication – and a fatal problem in cross-cultural research. Very often, the nuances of language and culture play such an important role that direct translations, even by 'expert translators,' simply don't make sense.
Census data from 1991 showed that there were close to 200,000 Hong Kong immigrants in Canada. This number should be much larger now with the recent massive influx. For researchers, this population is fertile ground for all kinds of research projects. And for businesses, the market potential is simply too great to ignore. Last fall, with ISR's help, I completed a survey of ethnic Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong. In this article, I'd like to share with you critical aspects of cross-cultural research that practitioners and academics alike should not overlook – back translation and pretesting.
In Canada, most researchers and businesses operate in English (or French). This is the language we use when we develop our research plans, when we decide on a research question, and when we construct our survey instruments. Take the questionnaire, for exa mple. We mull over the wording and choose the simplest and clearest phrase to describe something. We worry that the question might sound threatening. And so on. But what happens when this research question, this questionnaire, and indeed this research pla n is used to study people from another culture and with another language?
We translate.
Nothing wrong with that. Except we need to recognize that the translation can be quite different from the original. Different cultures attach different meanings to the same word. Take the word 'Chinese.' Are we interested in the way a person feels about h is or her Chinese ancestry and race? Or are we interested in how he or she feels about Chinese as a nationality? The common translation for both is identical. But, if we are specifically interested in one but not the other, we'd better make sure we're say ing it correctly.
In my study, one of the product categories was soft drinks. The translation for this term can literally mean carbonated beverages. Taken literally, it omits a whole range of soft drink products such as fruit drinks, iced tea, soya milk, and so on. The res earcher has to be cognizant of this and, depending on what the research question entails, take steps to remedy the situation.
A useful step to take is to have the translation 'back-translated' into English, followed by another round of pretesting. In my study, for instance, first the English version was translated into Chinese. Second, two bilingual individuals who were unrelate d to the study and who had not seen the English version independently back-translated the Chinese version into English. Discrepancies were analyzed and rewording of the questions was carried out if warranted. And third, the Chinese version of the question naire was pretested with Chinese individuals to ensure clarity and accuracy and to obtain feedback for any necessary changes.
Pretesting of the questionnaire was carried out in two stages. After an initial version of the questionnaire (in English) had been constructed, it was pretested with a random sample of 50 individuals of Hong Kong origin currently residing in the Metropoli tan Toronto area. This pretest provided an opportunity to detect sensitive questions as well as to weed out questions that did not make sense to respondents. A second pretest was then performed after changes from the first pretest were incorporated and af ter the Chinese version of the questionnaire had been constructed. In addition, seven personal interviews were conducted with Chinese-Canadians. This face-to-face pretesting allowed me to obtain detailed feedback from the pretest respondents and seek clar ifications where necessary. I was also able to find out from these respondents what they thought about each of the questions and to seek their suggestions for improvement. Such comments and suggestions were incorporated in the final version of the questio nnaire.
Even if you don't have the inclination (or the budget) to do the initial pretesting, I'd strongly encourage you to at least back-translate and pretest, before finalizing your instrument. Better to make changes now than to deal with responses that are not meaningful down the road.
Back-translation and pretesting are critical in cross-cultural research. An expert translator and well-trained interviewers who speak the language are not enough. GIGO (garbage in-garbage out) is a problem that befuddles not only computer programmers, but cross-cultural researchers as well. |
