Language proficiency and use of interpreters/translators in fieldwork: a survey of US-based anthropologists and sociologists

2.1 Sample

To accomplish the above-mentioned objectives, we decided to gather input from scholars with potentially the most linguistically and geographically diverse fieldwork experiences. That led us to focus our study on the faculty based at the highest ranked academic programs. While recognizing the flaws of academic rankings, we assume that those institutions provide access to more resources and host scholars with long lasting fieldwork careers, allowing us to collect data on their extensive experience. Accordingly, we focused our study on the faculty based at all the sociology and anthropology programs from the U.S. universities listed among the 1,000 highest ranked worldwide according to the QS World University Rankings from 2018.^[2] In particular, to compose the sampling frame, we visited the websites of 94 sociology and 85 anthropology programs based at US Higher Education Institutions that fulfilled the above mentioned criterium and compiled a list of 2,260 faculty of anthropology and 2,479 faculty of sociology programs, not discriminating their ranks/appointments to collect as diverse voices as possible.

This sampling strategy comes with a set of challenges and limitations. First, it is not fully representative of US based anthropologists and sociologists, as voices of faculty from smaller or lower-ranked institutions are missing from our analysis. A follow-up study comparing other types of higher education institutions with potentially different, but equally valuable dynamics of research activity could hopefully close this gap. Furthermore, the process of compiling a sampling frame was beset with difficulties like incomplete/outdated faculty profiles. Accordingly, we included all faculty listed, and introduced a filter question inquiring whether our subjects had conducted any field research (fieldwork, ethnography, interview, excavation, etc.) in an environment where a language other than English was present. As a result, 4,438 invitation e-mails were successfully delivered,^[3] and 913 anonymous responses (20% response rate) received from those who responded affirmatively to the filter question and consented to participate in the study. A comparison of academic ranks shows relative coherency between the sample and sampling frame with a slight oversampling of active Full Professors and underrepresentation of Emeritus, Teaching and Adjunct faculty. Furthermore, over a quarter were sociologists and over a half were anthropologists, indicating a higher response rate among the latter as expected considering their traditional research interests (Table 1).

To evaluate sample representativeness, we compare characteristics (Table 2) to data provided by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) 2018 survey for all the 94 sampled institutions. Still, IPEDS does not break down its data by academic programs or units, and there is no other authoritative data source on the matter. Thus, to provide a comparison closer to the anthropology and sociology disciplines we used the American Anthropological Association (AAA) (American Anthropological Association 2020) Survey of Departments, as well as the American Sociological Association (ASA) (American Sociological Association 2021a, 2021b) regular membership and Guide to Graduate Departments data. The IPEDS based comparison shows that our sample moderately underrepresents male and Asian faculty, and slightly overrepresents white faculty. Some of those variations are to be expected due to the differences between the social sciences and STEM gender profiles of faculty. On the other hand, less precise, but discipline relevant data from the AAA and ASA show their gender profiles as similar to the sample with only a slight underrepresentation of female faculty in our sample. Comparative racial/ethnic data is limited, but our sample closely approaches ASA profiles with the exceptions of underrepresented African American and overrepresented “other” categories.

Spatially, our analysis encompasses insights from over 180 different countries and territories where our respondents were active. Fifty one among those locations had at least 10 fieldsites reported equaling 1,740 fieldsites, approx. 80% of all reported in our survey (Figure 1). While the traditional division between anthropologists researching the cultures of colonized people and sociologists working in Western societies holds, it is less clear than one could expect (Figure 2). Still, anthropologists have a greater presence in Africa, the Middle East, Asia (especially South-East), and South America comparing to sociologists who tend to engage in fieldwork in North and Central America, Europe (especially Western), and Asia.

Figure 1:

Number of fieldsites reported by country.

Figure 2:

Comparison of fieldsites distribution between anthropologists and sociologists.

2.2 Instrument

The questionnaire consisted of 22 closed-ended, open-ended, and Liker-type questions. The respondents indicated geographic and linguistic characteristics of their fieldsites, as well as if they had “another person to translate/interpret” for them. At this point, we need to highlight that in our previous study that served as a pilot for this survey, we asked if our participants have ever used a translator/interpreter in their field research. Some of our respondents marked “no” and then listed other people who de facto acted as one. Assuming that our respondents might have chosen this answer as they thought we asked for a qualified professional, in the current survey, we opted for a more generic formulation of the question, hence we simply asked if they have used “another person to translate/interpret” for them.

This procedure allowed us to describe our sample in terms of languages encountered, but also map the regional differences in collaboration with translators. Next, we inquired about motives for their collaboration with translator(s) or lack thereof, following up with a question on how they managed in environments where a language(s) other than English was present. We also inquired regarding translators’ professional profile, role, language pairs, and fieldsite settings, as well as any problematic situations, and scholars’ satisfaction with their collaboration. Further, we elicited respondents’ level of agreement with statements related to the methodological and ethical issues surrounding the knowledge of vernacular, use of English in the field site, and the influence of translators on the research process. Additionally, we asked our participants to list all languages they interacted with during their field research,^[4] and to assess their fluency level based on a simplified version of an Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale (Interagency Language Roundtable n.d.)^[5] measuring language ability from 0 (No Proficiency) to 5 (Functionally Native Professional Proficiency). We then asked our respondents for any additional comments and solicited their demographic and professional profiles.

2.3 Analysis

We descriptively analyzed the 913 responses, including the geographies of language and translation in field research, researchers’ linguistic competence, history of collaboration with a translator and their profiles, perspective on the importance of vernacular’s knowledge, as well as perspectives on the admissibility of translators. To provide further insight into the context and motives behind researchers’ decisions we triangulated descriptive analysis with a thematic qualitative analysis of the open-ended prompts to 1) elaborate on decisions to involve (or not) an interpreter meaningfully answered by 869 respondents, 2) provide additional comments on the process meaningfully answered by 406 participants. Therein, data was first coded and then synthesized into major themes related to the decision on a collaboration with translators or lack thereof emerging across the responses. We provided illustrative excerpts from the answers accompanied with a basic profile of the participant, in the following format: gender – race/ethnicity – discipline – years of experience – rank – fieldsite locations.

3.1 Touting the proficiency, but lacking competence in vernacular

The advantage of language proficiency, as a medium to understand “local” knowledges was brought to attention by several contemporary sociologists (Birbili 2000; Bradby 2002; Scheyvens and Storey 2014; Temple 1997; Useem 2019 [1963]), and over 95% of our respondents supported this notion in the survey. Moreover, an overall agreement that researchers who work in a non-English environment should know the vernacular language was also high among our respondents at 81.9%. However, the self-assessment of proficiency in fieldwork languages provided by the same scholars stands in a startling contrast to their statements on the language mastery. In only 24% of the fieldwork, researchers’ proficiency was at full professional, native or bilingual levels, and in almost 60% of the cases, our respondents interacted with languages in which their proficiency was at or below limited working level (Table 3). Does it mean that in contemporary fieldwork researchers fail to put their own methodological stance into practice?

Not necessarily, as almost 75% of the researchers speak at least one fieldwork language other than English at a professional working, full professional, or native or bilingual level. Still, although our respondents reported interactions with over 400 languages, one should notice that they frequently deal with postcolonial linguistic legacies and those are also languages in which they present highest proficiency (Table 4), interestingly, matching the enrollment in the fifteen most taught languages in the US higher education institutions (see Looney and Lusin 2019). Our thematic analysis indicates that lack of proficiency is frequently related to the dynamics of contemporary fieldwork. We turn to this issue in the next sections. However, other common explanations for lack of linguistic preparation include personal and societal traits such as a lack of interest in foreign language learning, a lack of time, and the global popularity of English. Language instruction funding and access issues were also raised by our respondents, and parallels the general trends in foreign language learning in the US:

It takes a long time and total immersion to learn a local language properly--training programs and funding should reflect this! Ease of social media access probably interferes if it encourages grad students to keep one foot back in their home social network and linguistic world. (Male – White – Anthropology – 27 – Full Professor -Indonesia)

3.2 The commonness of translation services in field research

Following the above discussed trends in language proficiency, it is not surprising—but still quite fascinating to note—that over 65.3% of our respondents, and especially 68.9% of anthropologists, representatives of a discipline that promoted the idea of mastering the vernacular and dispensing of interpreters (see Beattie 1964; Evans-Pritchard 1951; Fortes 1945; Malinowski 1984 [1922]; Mead 1939), used a translator at least in one of their fieldsites. This is by no means a critique of contemporary anthropologists, but rather an indication that the “textbook” knowledge and still existing ethos of field research do not necessarily fit the fieldwork reality. A widespread inclusion of methodological guidelines on collaboration with translators could help diminish biases in perception and application of vernacular’s proficiency. For example, our current results indicate a relationship between an agreement that researchers who work in a non-English environment should know the vernacular language and respondent’s history of collaboration with a translator (78.4% overall and 40% strong agreement) or lack thereof (88.5% overall and 64% strong agreement). The opinions on the relationship between not knowing the vernacular and missing important data, possessing less control over the research, and balancing the power between the researched and researcher present a similar pattern (Figure 3).

Figure 3:

Opinions on language in fieldwork by experience with translator.

Interestingly, ‘only’ 54.1% of the sociologists in our sample ever collaborated with a translator compared to over two thirds of anthropologists. It would, however, be spurious to claim that American sociologists had less need for translators due to their proficiency in languages other than English. It is rather due to the traditional research interests exposing anthropologists to an increased number of languages and geographies, as visible in the highest shares of fieldwork with translator use reported in African and Asian countries. In comparison, sociologists frequently work in the US and regions like Western Europe where one could claim to “get by” with English (compare Figures 2 and 4). This aligns with the results of our thematic analysis which indicates the global popularity of English as one of the deterrents to mastering field languages among respondents.

Figure 4:

Geographic distribution of translators use during the fieldwork.

3.3 Liabilities of using English

The overreliance on English is a frequent and a problematic practice in both international research and studies of domestic minorities. Our thematic analysis found detailed accounts of thirty-four respondents^[6] conducting their studies using English in communities that were not primarily English speaking. Additionally, fifteen scholars explained use of their native majority languages (mostly Spanish and Russian) instead of the local language, because the researched population knew the researcher’s language well enough to communicate. Using researchers’ native language in an environment where it is relatively well known as a second or official language is a convenient option, but implications of this approach should not be ignored. The first concern is related to the issue of representation, as people may present themselves differently in different languages (Temple and Koterba 2009). On the other hand, Pavlenko (2006) highlights that in bilingual individuals, ‘the two languages may be linked to different linguistic repertoires, cultural scripts, frames of expectation, autobiographic memories, and levels of proficiency and emotionality. They may also be associated with conflicting allegiances, distinct imagined audiences, incompatible subject positions, and mutually exclusive arguments’ (p. 27). We thus deal with a political act that should be recognized as such with all ethical and methodological implications (see Clifford 1983; Spivak 1993; Temple and Koterba 2009; Venutti 1995) as presented by one of our respondents:

Some of my interviewees overtly complained about foreign researchers who did not speak their local languages at all and told me that they gave only “courtesy” answers or answers what researchers were looking for. This kind of emotion was quite intense among interviewees, especially when they were regarded as “marginalized” or “minority” people. (Female – Asian – Sociology – 15 – Associate Professor – Japan, USA, UK)

Since not all languages have equal status (Blommaert 1996), often due to the process of colonization, a direct use of privileged languages like English implies an unstable balance between two languages and two cultures (Alvarez and Vidal 1996). The dominant language is intrinsically linked to power and available exclusively for the wealthy resulting with the voices of marginalized populations lost among those privileged to the knowledge (Watson 2004). Because of that, and despite that some field researchers ‘use interpreters, not because (…) [they] like to, but because (…) [they] have no other choice’ (Lowie 1940: 89) there is a methodological need to identify situations that call for a support of an interpreter and the circumstances in which the use of vernacular by a researcher is preferred.

3.4 Necessity and admissibility of interpreters

Our respondents indicated a variety of field circumstances which generate a need for translators, many of them related to the modern dynamics of field research. The increase in short-term projects, multi-sited fieldwork, international collaborative research, and studies of communities with multiple co-existing languages are among the most frequently encountered factors in our thematic analysis, as exemplified by the following respondents:

I am fluent in most of the languages I use in the field (plus a few more). But for short-term comparative studies, it is not feasible to prepare to the point of fluency. Only in that situation do I use a translator. I consider it essential for long-term work to always work in the native language of the research site. (Male – White – Anthropology – 40 – Full Professor – Iran, Arabian Peninsula, Japan, Germany, Austria, India, Malaysia, China, Indonesia)

I conducted research in an urban context where multiple languages were present. Because I do not have a fluency in all necessary languages but wanted to interview interlocutors from a variety of language fluencies, I relied on interpreters to carry out my research. (Male – White – Anthropology – 8 – Adjunct – South Sudan)

I run multi-national projects. In Albania and Kosovo in particular we use both English and Albanian as official project languages. Day to day and while working, I can get by in Albanian. For some important conversations I use a translator, typically my wife and co-director who is a native speaker of Albanian. For […] ethnographic research, we typically used native speakers to conduct interviews or assist with the interviews. (Male – White – Anthropology – 20 – Full Professor – Greece, Albania, Kosovo, Hungary)

However, we have also identified several patterns of circumstances where a need for translator raised not due to the complexity of a field study, but rather because of low proficiency among scholars, including some languages being either – subjectively – too difficult to learn, or spoken by only few individuals and impossible to learn before fieldwork due to logistical reasons. Another glimpse at Figure 4 corroborates this problem with the geographic distribution of the use of interpreters. In fact, several respondents understood language acquisition as a methodological process that takes place during fieldwork (frequently alongside a translator). Other criticized the idea of rapid language acquisition as unrealistic:

It always amazing me when some anthropologists purport to have learned the language of their research group in less than a year, and then conducted all their research in that language. I am a true bilingual in Swedish and English, and I can say with confidence that this is not possible, or if they do, they are not picking up on the nuances of meaning on the topic(s) of their research. […] Hence, I think anthropologists working in communities who speak languages which are not the researcher’s native language, must always use local translators. (Female – White – Anthropology – 28 – Associate Professor – Kenia, Tanzania, Ethiopia)

Therefore, it is not surprising that our respondents overwhelmingly agreed that the lack of language competency during fieldwork should trigger a collaboration with translator, with the sentiment being stronger among those who had experience with translators, indicating an inverted trend comparing to the pattern seen in previously discussed opinions (compare Figures 3 and 5).

Figure 5:

Translator’s admissibility and their impact on fieldwork by experience with translator.

3.5 Avoidance and disownment of interpreters

Still, our thematic analysis indicated that hiring an interpreter when needed is not always a possibility. For instance, twelve respondents explained that limited funding was an obstacle and even altered their research design, with the issue affecting both early-career and experienced researchers. The lack of resources is a reappearing, but not the most common reason that leads to an executive decision to avoid help from interpreters. Our analysis of the scholars who did not resort to translators’ help found that thirty-five explicitly referred to ethical and methodological issues dictated by their discipline advocating language proficiency, most frequently: the respect toward the studied community, increased accessibility, direct contact with collaborators, and establishing rapport. Those factors are in line with previous individual accounts on the process of language acquisitions (see or Watson 2004). Additionally, several respondents noted that an intermediary would have possibly jeopardized their research, as interviewees would not feel comfortable to answer sensitive questions, like in the example:

[…] the presence of a translator can be problematic, and I felt could negatively impact my ethnographic research. I am proficient in Malayalam, so decided to conduct my research, including recorded interviews, on my own, and consult with my former Malayalam teacher on sections of the interview I did not fully understand. In this case, I would indicate which sections or words of the interview I didn’t understand, and I had a native speaker transcribe those phrases or words so that I could look up the meaning in a dictionary […] (Female – White – Anthropology – 3 – Assistant Professor – India)

Interestingly, even though this participant marked “no” as an answer to the question if they have ever used another person to translate/interpret for them, their extended explanation shows the contrary. In fact, a similar pattern was found in another thirty-three respondents, stating they had not collaborated with a translator/interpreter, and at the same time describing interpreter’s tasks performed by their colleagues, research assistants, bilingual managers, or family members. This, apparently not uncommon, misperception adds to the marginalization and methodological invisibility of the translator profession (see Sepielak et al. 2019). Furthermore, the researchers that had an opportunity to collaborate with translators hold in higher regard their role in accessing data (88.5% overall agreement) compared to those that never resorted to such help (69.1% overall agreement), thus the hesitation seems to be related to the experience. Similar pattern exists in researchers’ opinions regarding translators’ negative interference in data collection (Figure 5) where some previous work with translators increases the level of disagreement with the statement (50.8% overall disagree and 14.1% overall agree) compared to lack of such collaboration (39.3% overall disagree and 34.4% overall agree). The role of previous experience in forming an opinion on the role of translators is even more emphasized here, with over a third of the respondents among those lacking any experience with translators forming negative opinions about their influence on the fieldwork. Those opinions appear prejudicial and are alarming, especially in the reality of the common collaboration with translators and interpreters found by our study.

3.6 Profile and evaluation of interpreters

A glimpse at the survey trends regarding the characteristics of those who translated/interpreted for our respondents (Table 5) provides further insight into this issue, indicating an almost complete reliance on a non-professional unpaid interpreter, with only 10% of our respondents working with a professional paid interpreter at least once.

Besides the funding challenges, our thematic analysis indicated several trends behind relying on non-professional or unpaid interpreters. Most frequently those were presented as pertaining to the relationships with or within the researched communities and described as innate features of the field research. Frequently, an extensive international fieldwork prompted local friendships, that were later conveniently invited to participate in the research process as translators (sometimes while researchers were in the language learning process themselves). In several cases, those informal reciprocity arrangements were given preferences to professional translators, as the latter would be drawn disproportionately from the more affluent or culturally different sectors of society, as in the example:

In Yemen the class background of the translator interfered with her neutrality – she was of a higher class than most of the women I was interviewing, and it was apparent from her behavior that she was disrespecting them. (Female–White–Anthropology–35–Professor–Peru_Kyrgyzstan_Kazakhstan_Belize_India_Yemen_Burkina_Faso_Ghana_Mexico)

A persistent pattern indicated that arrangements with informal interpreters would sometimes convert or begin as a part of a patron-client relationship with an unbalanced power difference between the researcher and the translator or the community. Other times, the respondents explained that the arrangements were parts of negotiations of power withing a wider local informal politics setting:

In Ethiopia and Kenya, we also hired local people who knew a bit of English, in part, as a goodwill gesture to tribal leaders. Security situation was such that they were going to send a few warriors out to keep an eye on us anyway, so we figured hiring them and paying them to help out on the excavation was just a good way to keep them out of trouble. (Female–White–Anthropology–45+–Retired–Kenia_Ethiopia_Netherlands_Indonesia)

Our thematic analysis found contrasting evaluations of ethical and methodological premises behind these practices, with some of the respondents finding the habitual interpreters’ profiles deeply concerning:

The worse in my opinion is the white male researcher who does not know the local language, but has married a woman who is a native of the country (but not the region) and uses her as his translator, project manager, etc. It’s very common in some subfields, and it establishes a race/gender/nationality hierarchy that reinforces local power dynamics and guarantees that the researcher is only going to hear hegemonic points of view (i.e., older males in the community probably approve, young women are only going to say and do what they think powerful men want to hear). (Female–White–Anthropology–30+–Full_Professor–Ecuador_Peru)

I make it a point to only bring on team members who are able to communicate with the local members of the project. While I do this to improve the quality of research and facilitate the research process, I primarily do this to de-colonialize the research process, i.e. mitigate the fact that I am an American researcher working in a country with a long history of imperialist relations, beyond and including archaeology (Latin America). (Female–White–Anthropology–4–Full_time_Teaching_Appointment–Peru)

Ethical issues appear as paramount here with the controversial and under-researched problem of the informal economy in translation with Motsie (2010) suggesting that a market may exist for informal interpreters with haphazard linguistic skills due to the target groups linguistic skills, and Marais (2014: 187) indicating that “the focus [within translation studies] on high culture is not wrong but limited’ calling on scholars to ‘study the informal economy in order to better understand the role of (informal and nonprofessional) translation in the emergence of society and how translation could be developed (if necessary) in the informal economy.” Interestingly, in line with the calls for better understanding of informal translation, over 95% of our respondents were satisfied with the persons who translated for them (Figure 6). Without doubt, researchers’ satisfaction with non-professional or/and non-paid interpreters does not erase issues related to power dynamics, data quality or translators’ marginalization, but it constitutes another relevant indicator of their perspective on the involvement of an interpreter.

Figure 6:

Satisfaction with translator by discipline.