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Translation in cross-language international business research: Beyond equivalence

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Abstract

In this paper, we problematise the way translation has been treated in international business (IB) research. We start by conducting an interpretive content analysis of both qualitative and quantitative cross-language studies published in four core IB journals over the course of a decade. Our analysis shows the dominance of a technicist view of translation associated with the equivalence paradigm. In contrast, we advocate a shift to a more contextualised approach informed by theoretical developments in translation studies. More specifically, we focus on two theoretical perspectives – skopos theory and cultural politics – which offer related but distinct approaches to rethinking equivalence. We conclude by advocating that the translation process be reframed as a process of intercultural interaction, rather than a lexical transfer of meaning. This reconceptualisation would, we argue, open up what is currently a “black box” in most IB studies. The contextualised approach that we offer has the potential not just to enrich the findings of studies, but also provide insights that are of multidisciplinary relevance.

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Notes

  1. Craig and Douglas, in their influential text published in 2000, define equivalence or comparability as having “the same meaning or interpretation”, in line with Hult et al. (2008), but add the proviso “as far as possible” (141).

  2. The steps are: rewriting the original text to make it more “translatable”; hiring translators with content-specific knowledge as well as linguistic expertise; conducting a back-translation; having the translation independently reviewed; pre-testing the instrument on a target-language population and then on bilinguals, one group of which receives the original and the other the translated version; to check that responses are similar across both groups; and formally reporting the degree of no-error standard that has been achieved.

  3. “Interpretive content analysis” is also variously termed “interpretive textual analysis” (Gephart, 1997), “qualitative content analysis” (Schreier, 2012) and “qualitative textual analysis” (Seale, 2003).

  4. We should also clarify that while we acknowledge the recent growth in papers on language policies and practices in the MNE (e.g., Peltokorpi and Vaara, 2012; Piekkari, Welch, Welch, & Peltonen, 2013), our purpose in this paper was not to review this literature, but to examine the use of translation across all topics published in IB journals.

  5. We found that mixed-method (i.e., qualitative and quantitative) papers were primarily quantitative in nature. These papers described the qualitative study only briefly and did not present and discuss any qualitative findings (for a similar finding, see Hurmerinta-Peltomäki & Nummela, 2006). For this reason we included them in the group of quantitative studies.

  6. We cannot exclude the possibility that the number of (quantitative and qualitative) cross-language studies was actually higher; however, we could only judge this criterion on the basis of what the authors have themselves explicitly mentioned. In the end, we went with the authors’ explicit claims.

  7. Specifically, we coded quantitative papers for language choice, (back) translation, pilot-testing of the study’s instrument, reviewers, discussion of equivalence and use of translators (see, e.g., Brislin, 1970). We coded qualitative papers for choice of (interview) language, conceptual equivalence, translator credentials, researchers’ language ability, (back) translation of the interview guide, translation of interview quotations (see Squires, 2009).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mona Baker and Elpida Loupaki for sharing their expertise in translation studies – although any remaining errors are our own doing. We are also grateful to Jacqueline Mees-Buss, Denice Welch, Lawrence Welch and Paul Downward for their insightful and timely feedback. We received useful comments from presentations at the Graduate School of Management, St Petersburg, and the 2013 annual meeting of the Academy of International Business in Istanbul. We also acknowledge the Editor, Susanne Tietze, and three reviewers for their constructive comments on our manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

    Agnieszka Chidlow

  2. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki

  3. University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Catherine Welch

Authors
  1. Agnieszka Chidlow
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  2. Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki
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  3. Catherine Welch
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emmanuella Plakoyiannaki.

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Accepted by Suzanne Tietze, Guest Editor, 30 October 2013. This paper has been with the authors for two revisions.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX

Cross-Journal Comparison

Looking at the findings in Table A1, it can be seen that the reporting of translation decisions differs significantly across journals for quantitative and/or qualitative papers. Regarding quantitative papers, the studies that appear in the most highly ranked journal (JIBS) are more likely to raise cross-language issues. The qualitative papers that mention how they dealt with translation are more likely to be found in lower ranked journals, but this is primarily the result of the absolute number of qualitative papers that appear in these journals. Overall, it seems that quantitative papers pay more attention to language issues than qualitative papers. As shown in Table A1, Type 3 is the most common category of cross-language studies used in quantitative (120 or 36%) articles. However, the “not clear” Type is the most applied category among qualitative (26 or 39%) papers in the examined period.

Table A1 Sample characteristics of cross-language studies across journals, 2000–2009a
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Table A1

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Chidlow, A., Plakoyiannaki, E. & Welch, C. Translation in cross-language international business research: Beyond equivalence. J Int Bus Stud 45, 562–582 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/jibs.2013.67

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