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      The bilingual researcher’s dilemmas: Reflexive approaches to translation issues

      Lee, Sherrie
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      Lee - 2017 - The bilingual researcher’s dilemmas Reflective approaches to translation issues.pdf
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      DOI
       10.15663/wje.v22i2.568
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      Lee, S. (2017). The bilingual researcher’s dilemmas: Reflexive approaches to translation issues. Waikato Journal of Education, 22(2). https://doi.org/10.15663/wje.v22i2.568
      Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/12035
      Abstract
      Research conducted by English-speaking researchers about other language speaking subjects is essentially cross-cultural and often multilingual, particularly with qualitative research that involves participants communicating in languages other than English. In research using non-English data, scholars have noted that the translation process can be problematic, and is often glossed over. Thus, they call for greater transparency in accounting for translation decisions. This article is a reflexive account of the author’s doctoral research about international EAL (English as an Additional Language) students’ informal academic learning practices. Nine of the ten research participants were of Chinese ethnicity and, consequently, a substantial portion of the data collected was in Chinese.

      I am a Chinese Singaporean who is bilingual in English and Chinese. I discuss the dilemmas faced when interpreting and translating data from the Chinese participants, each of whom had his or her own particular social and cultural backgrounds. The dilemmas I faced were related to i) immediate understanding of interview responses, ii) interview transcription for member checking, and iii) translation of data. I argue that these dilemmas can be resolved by member checking during data collection and analysis, and the use of professional translators. However, I also caution against an idealised notion of objective meaning in translation. I conclude that cross-cultural research should take into account the researcher’s cultural and language identity in understanding how data from research participants is represented.
      Date
      2017
      Type
      Journal Article
      Publisher
      Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, Te Kura Toi Tangata Faculty of Education, University of Waikato
      Rights
      © 2017 Sherrie Lee.This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
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      • Education Papers [1411]
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