Crossed Wires: Interpreters, Translators, and Bilingual Workers in Cross-Language Research

TLDR

Cross‑language research increasingly involves participants who do not share a common language, yet the field has rarely addressed how language shapes social reality and the methodological challenges of using interpreters, translators, and cultural brokers to convey conceptual differences. The study uses a project with two Asian mental health workers to examine how language differences affect cross‑language research. The author applies a biographical approach to the project, highlighting both its benefits and the challenges it introduces. The biographical approach offers valuable insights but also reveals significant methodological problems.

Abstract

Increasingly, researchers are undertaking studies involving people who do not speak the same language as they do. Sociologists have long argued that language constructs the social world at the same time as it describes it. However, the implications of this for cross-language research are rarely considered. Employing interpreters/translators and "cultural brokers" in research raises methodological issues around the meanings of concepts and how to convey difference. Using a project that employed two Asian mental health workers, the author teases out some of the implications for research of language difference. She focuses both on the value of a biographical approach and on the problems such an approach presents.