Abstracts
Abstract
This article describes the design and compilation of the Multilingual Corpus of Survey Questionnaires (MCSQ), the first publicly available corpus of international survey questionnaires. Version 3.0 (Rosalind Franklin) is compiled from questionnaires from the European Social Survey, the European Values Study, the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, and the Wage Indicator Survey in the (British) English source language and their translations into eight languages (Catalan, Czech, French, German, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian). Documents in the corpus were translated with the objective of maximising data comparability across cultures. After contextualising aims and procedures in survey translation, this article presents examples of two types of problematic translation outcomes in survey questionnaires: The first type relates to the choice of idiomatic terms or fixed expressions in the source text. The second type relates to cases where the semantic variation of translation choices exceeds the scope allowed to maintain the psychometric properties across languages. With these examples, we aim to demonstrate how corpus linguistics can be used to analyse past translation outcomes and to improve the methodology for translating questionnaires.
Keywords:
- multilingual corpus,
- questionnaire translation,
- survey research,
- TRAPD,
- corpus linguistics
Résumé
Cet article décrit la conception et la compilation du Multilingual Corpus of Survey Questionnaires (MCSQ), le premier corpus de questionnaires d’enquêtes internationales accessible au public. La version 3.0 (Rosalind Franklin) est compilée à partir des questionnaires de l’Enquête sociale européenne, de l’European Values Study, de l’Enquête sur la santé et le vieillissement et la retraite en Europe, et du WageIndicator Survey dans la langue de départ, anglais (britannique), et leurs traductions en huit langues (catalan, tchèque, français, allemand, norvégien, portugais, espagnol et russe). Les documents du corpus ont été traduits en vue de maximiser la comparabilité des données entre les cultures. Après avoir contextualisé les objectifs et les procédures de traduction d’enquête, cet article présente des exemples de deux types de résultats de traduction problématiques dans les questionnaires d’enquêtes : le premier type concerne le choix de termes idiomatiques ou d’expressions fixes dans la langue de départ. Le deuxième type concerne les cas où la variation sémantique des choix de traduction dépasse la portée autorisée pour maintenir les propriétés psychométriques à travers des langues. Avec ces exemples, nous souhaitons démontrer comment la linguistique de corpus peut être utilisée pour analyser les résultats de traduction passés et pour améliorer la méthodologie de traduction de questionnaire.
Mots-clés :
- corpus multilingue,
- traduction de questionnaires,
- recherche d’enquêtes,
- TRAPD,
- linguistique de corpus
Resumen
Este artículo describe el diseño y la compilación del Multilingual Corpus of Survey Questionnaires (MCSQ), el primer corpus público de cuestionarios de encuestas internacionales. La versión 3.0 (Rosalind Franklin) se compila a partir de cuestionarios de la Encuesta Social Europea, el European Values Study (EVS), la Encuesta de Salud, Envejecimiento y Jubilación en Europa, y el WageIndicator Survey en el idioma de origen (inglés británico) y sus traducciones a ocho idiomas (catalán, checo, francés, alemán, noruego, portugués, español y ruso). Los documentos del corpus se tradujeron con el objetivo de maximizar la comparabilidad de los datos entre culturas. Después de contextualizar los objetivos y procedimientos en la traducción de encuestas, este artículo presenta ejemplos de dos tipos de resultados de traducción problemáticos en cuestionarios de encuestas. El primer tipo se relaciona con la elección de términos idiomáticos o expresiones fijas en el texto original. El segundo tipo se relaciona con los casos en los que la variación semántica de las opciones de traducción excede el alcance permitido para mantener las mismas propiedades psicométricas en todos los idiomas. Con estos ejemplos, nuestro objetivo es demostrar cómo se puede utilizar la lingüística de corpus para analizar los resultados de traducción y mejorar la metodología de traducción de cuestionarios.
Palabras clave:
- corpus multilingüe,
- traducción de cuestionarios,
- investigación por encuestas,
- TRAPD,
- lingüística de corpus
Appendices
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