Developing Multilingual Questionnaires: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

• Activity Number: 613
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 5, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Yuling Pan*+
• Companies: U.S. Census Bureau
• Keywords: survey translation ; multilingual questionnaire ; sociolinguistics ; measurement errors

Abstract

Central to the development of multilingual questionnaires is a sound translation of the source questionnaire into target languages. This study aims to determine the types of translation issues that can lead to measurement errors in cross-cultural studies. Based on two multilingual projects conducted to cognitively test the translations of the 2010 U.S. Census questionnaire in four languages as well as the English original (Chinese, Korean, Russian, and Vietnamese) and the American Community Survey questionnaire in two languages (Chinese and Korean), we developed a coding scheme guided by sociolinguistic theories to systematically analyze translation issues. This paper discusses how the coding scheme can be useful in the development of multilingual questionnaires and suggests feasible solutions to translation issues, so as to ensure translation quality.