Welcome to the Listening Post!

Best Practices for Working with a Survey Translator

Tweet

 

The best translators have excellent understandings of English, the target culture, the industry and survey research. They are native speakers and professional translators (preferably certified translators). All of which is a tough combination to find!

Too often, translations are "insourced". "We have employees in Botswana," the thinking goes, "they know the language. Let's just have them do it." While this is one way around budget limitations, employees often do not have the requisite experience. Just because they know both languages doesn't mean they are good at translating; translation is a demanding art. Worse, survey translations are more demanding than traditional translations.

So your best bet is to hire professional translators. For when you do, here are some best practices for working with them (via Kathleen Bostick, VP of Global Marketing for Lionbridge):

• Brief the translators ahead of time on the intent of the survey
• Create a glossary with the English terms and the target language terms for consistency
• Use native speakers to review the translation and provide feedback
• Pilot test the translation of survey (keeping in mind this will lengthen the process)
• Perform a backtranslation to catch any errors from literal translations.

Preferably, have the same translators who translated the questionnaire and accompanying documents translate the open-ended comments once the survey is complete. This leverages their knowledge of the study.

What advice would you give for working with translators for survey research? 

For more detail on the survey-translation process, see these blog posts and articles:

• Survey Translation at 30,000 Feet 
• Survey Translation at 3,000 Feet 
• The Translator is a Traitor
• What Not to Expect When Conducting International Surveys