SECTION II Literature Review
Chapter 7 Methodology
7.6. Issues of translation and concept interpretation
The Chinese scripting for the word 'crisis' comprises two characters: one that reflects 'danger' and the other 'opportunity'. The crisis of working within cross-cultural settings, necessitated special attention to the interpretation of concepts and translation, as well as to the suitability of the psychometric measures that were to be used in the evaluation of the SGTP. This created an opportunity for real collaboration and knowledge development between community members and the researcher.
Enormous difficulties were experienced in accurately translating and interpreting ideas and concepts.
These difficulties were magnified as the researcher had to rely on the input of others in order to ascertain the accuracy of translations and interpretations during all phases of the intervention and especially during the conduction of the SP and the SGTP. It is believed that working within a PAR ethic enabled these difficulties to be circumvented with relative success.
Most of the participants were mother tongue isiZulu speakers. Many also had some English fluency, and it soon became clear that when one person offered an English translation of an isiZulu contribution (or vice versa), debate and discussion about the accuracy of the translation frequently occurred. Often, the translator also needed to discuss how to translate/interpret from one language to the other. It seemed that there were a number of sources of error that had to be taken into consideration: (i) isiZulu is a language rich in its use of metaphors (Mbiti, 1989) and the basic grammatical structure differs considerably from English. This created space for interpretation by individual respondents - a process that may have threatened the internal valdiity of the entire process (Tredoux, 2002). (ii) Many English words, particularly those that have conceptual meanings, were not part of ordinary isiZulu. This lack of terminology made the process difficult, (iii) It soon became apparent that there were geographically- based dialectic strands of isiZulu that had developed within specific regions, making it difficult for people in one community to understand the phrases used in a different community, (iv) The degree of exposure to westernisation, education and media differed substantially across communities. In fact, people with tertiary education proved to be the least useful in offering translations since the 'dialect' that they spoke was frequently incomprehensible to community members.
In addition, the researcher wished to use psychometric tests to summatively evaluate the effectiveness of the SGTP by measuring manifest symptomatology (including depression, conduct difficulties, traumagenic and other childhood problems), self esteem and social support. South African psychological literature is relatively devoid of valid and reliable instruments suitable for isiZulu subjects (Swartz, 1998). Therefore, there was little choice but to rely on tests that had been derived from western contexts.
It was hoped that the sample size would generate a database that could be used to establish the psychometric properties associated with the selected tests, even though the tests were to be used with children who had expereicned extreme conditons of adveristy and risk.
The translation and interpretation of terms and concepts, especially for semi-literate or illiterate subjects who spoke isiZulu, presented an enormous challenge. The basic translation and interpretation procedure began by selecting and/or developing questionnaires on the basis of their applicability to the dependent variables being investigated (See Chapter 10). Adhering to the procedure suggested by Brislin (1986, in Swartz, 1998), the selected instruments were translated from their source language (English) into the target language (isiZulu). An independent mother-tongue isiZulu speaker (who is fluent in English) then translated from the target language back to the source language. The original English version and the back-translated version were then compared. There were so many discrepancies that the entire process
had to be reviewed. For research (and intervention) purposes, it is essential that one knows precisely what respondents understand about what is being asked of them. "This involves more than accurate translation and back-translation - it requires us to find out, as far as we are able, whether the meaning we give to any instrument has the same meaning for our respondents" (Swartz, 1998, p. 210). The discrepancies that arose during the back-translation procedures showed that at best this could regarded as a mere first step in translation since there was a lack of clarity about the nature of the constructs being measured in the tests. A different procedure had to be found to deal with these difficulties.
In order to address these problems, community members who were relatively fluent in both languages, and confident enough to challenge the researcher about meanings, were engaged (on a voluntary basis) as research assistants/co-facilitators. Research assistants were recruited form each of the partnering communities. During 3-day workshops, they were trained in interview techniques, data collection, questionnaire administration and research rigour and ethics. Working within small groups, the research assistants were encouraged to translate and interpret the concepts and ideas - a process that some individuals reported to be especially affirming of their home language and their ideas. Numerous translations and back-translations were produced and much sharing of information took place. These discussions, usually with young people, but inclusive of local Amakhosi and other community leaders in five instances, proved to be extremely useful. The debates and discussions proved to be extremely useful as people became actively engaged with concepts while trying to find the best translations. In effect, this meant that the translation process served an educative function for both the researcher and the research assistants. It enabled the questionnaires to be understood and a shared meaning to be developed. At the suggestion of the research assistants, the printed questionnaires included the English version as a memory cue that would enable them to question around an issue to ensure that the respondent had grasped the meaning of a question.
During these research assistant training workshops, it became apparent that community members were frequently linking certain behavioural criteria to psychosocial vulnerability. It was possible that these criteria could form the basis of a culturally-defined specification of psychosocial risk and vulnerability.
Therefore they were incorporated into the questionnaires for the purpose of measuring their frequency and co-existence with more western-based diagnostic criteria. The possible relationship between these criteria and exposure to the risk factors will be explored later in this chapter.
The translation process was extremely time consuming but ultimately it proved to be useful in developing
synergistic co-operation between the researcher and community members. There was much discussion and challenging of the meaning of questions and concepts. At times, there was no clear resolution of these difficulties with the debates acknowledging diversity and ambiguity. Nevertheless, it is believed that this protracted translation process was beneficial in that it (i) evoked much interest among community members; (ii) demonstrated the researcher's genuine search for shared meaning; (iii) was empowering and capacity building for the participants who became the research assistants for the data collection; (iv) served to deepen and equalise relationships between research assistants and the researcher; (v) led to the development of social groups within each community who felt integrally involved, frequently became the driving force behind community-based initiatives, and enrolled as apprentice-facilitators for the SGTP or one of the control conditions; and (vi) was great fun! Most importantly, this process of translation and training of community-based research assistants, powerfully demonstrated a commitment to bi-directional knowledge sharing and understanding between the community members and the researcher.