I believe that at least the passages you quote in your dissertation should be in the language of the dissertation.

You do not necessarily need to translate everything before analysis.  The analysis may be better done in the native language.

Your school may have some guidelines about this, so be sure to ask your advisor.

I would include a translation into English to make it understandable to a broader audience, especially the reviewers. It should be clearly stated that it is a translation and not an independent interview.

Thanks for the answers! 

@Michael Marek, asking the department (supervisor) is a good idea. 

@ Pål Østebø Andersen - It is a doctoral dissertation, the amount of the interview transcripts in other languages is enormous (200 pages, at least). This is the reason why I want to make sure that it is absolutely necessary to include the translated transcripts in the appendix, before starting the whole translation work. 

Kindly, 

Aysel 

I think some fragments you quote definitely should be translated, this is done for different reasons (most are particular reasons, or for keys to get in other languages researches), but if you want to spread out your doctoral dissertation and make it available for others to be able to read it and use it as a support or pursuit some specific area of specialization or study, it is absolutely recommendable to translate everything in english. A professional translator is suitable for this kind of work or a translation agency.

Hi Aysel,

I think that the best option is to ask your supervisors, as already suggested: they are surely aware of the specific guidelines in your field! Having said that, as a strong believer in multilingual practices, I think you should provide both the original and the translation of all the passages from your interviews that you decide to quote directly in your thesis. It's a long process, I know, but that's what they do in my department, and that's what I am doing myself with the content of my thesis that is not in English.

I hope that helps!

Silvia

Dear Aysel,

In my case, as I am doing a research with Azerbaijani materials, I have to translate interviews into the language of the thesis i.e. English.

Because your thesis is in English, and you have a wide range of audience, and of course your audience know English, and English nowadays is a scientefic language and a medium language between scholars, in my view, it is better to translate your interviews into English, even the German one.

Best Regards,

Amin

I think it is important to translate some of extracts of the interview which could be presented  in your thesis to show what your interviewees exactly exported about the issues investigated in your atudy.

As some of our RG colleagues here have argued, think about the readers of your thesis (especially the examiners). Will there be an external examiner, possibly from a foreign country where German is not spoken? Then, even the passages written in German have to be translated -- -- unless you want to annoy the examiner on a big scale  :--) .

The passages from interviews conducted in Russian and Azerbaijani that provide important data that you discuss at a greater length absolutely have to be translated into the language of your thesis.  

Also, it is a practice in many universities to deposit theses in their library for open access. If this is the practice in your university, then what someone who is interested in your study but is unable to understand big chunks of the text is going to do?

As to whether all of the transcripts have to be translated -- definitely you would want to consult your thesis supervisors regarding the institutional policies. 

Good luck!

Larisa

It is very necessary to translate those interviews in different languages to the language of your dissertation for some obvious reason (comprehension). On the other hand, you need to consult your supervisor who is in the better position to guide you depending on the rules and regulations in your institution. My clear take on this question  is that you should translate. 

Remain blessed.

Eucharia

Dear Aysel

In some cases where there is a lot of material it is possible to make it available as supplementary material that can be downloaded electronically. That would be a good way to keep it available to both reviewers and readers without printing additional 100s of pages. This is also a good way to reduce printing costs.

Regards,

Pål Andersen

If I was on your committee I would insist that you supplied everything in a form I could understand.

Please help! I took interviews in foreign language. In chapter 4 - findings, do I need to present the quotes in foreign language and its translation, or should I directly write the translations? This is pretty urgent!!!

Thank you all for the comments. There is a lot of misunderstanding from what I read in the comments. Of course the passages used in the dissertation are all translated into English. I assumed it was obvious, so didn’t clarify in the original question. I was wondering whether the entire transcripts of other three languages have to translated and attached as appendices. I now know from the department and supervisors that it is not necessary. Kindly,

Aysel

I had a chat with a friend today discussing about this need in NVivo. My opinion so far: quotes, as you said, will be in English. But if you are using NVivo, as I could experience so far is that you can use your interviews in any language and create codes and themes in English. The only thing that probably you will not be able to do is to create the word frequency map in English as the interviews are in a different language. In my point of view it is a matter of cost x benefit. How many times supervisors will access interviews (let's be serious)? Interviews are included in the appendix? Can examiners have access to the interviews (if ethics committee approved access only for the supervisory team)?

Was this your question about?

By this time you should have an answer? What happened to you Aysel Sultan ?

I don't think that there is a strict general rule. However, I think there may be some guiding rules/principles/criteria depending on (a) requirements of a specific discipline (b) significance/sensitivity of the quote itself. For some disciplines using largely archival sources like history or anthropology they may have more interest in writing the quote in original language. But for other disciplines like Political Science (the one in which I am specializing) we tend to present the interview quotes in original language only when it is "exceptionally" necessary in terms of the significance of the quote or its "great" sensitivity, i.e., that could have a special attraction to readers of the original language. That is to say, they are supposed to used sparingly, only when it is really necessary.

Thank you Mohammed.

You could do this two ways. You could translate everything first, and then analyze the data. Or, you could analyze the date in the native language, and only translate those passages you intend to quote. I think that either approach can be defended as satisfactory methodology.

i think its depends on how your supervisor/advisor suggests. however, its better to translate into the standard language of study in order to show reliability and authority over reporting the findings. yet there is not any rule binding to opt any single way..

I have finished my dissertation. This is what I did.

I imported the interviews in foreign language into Nvivo. I coded the interviews in original language, followed by data analysis, from the original language. When the results were to be presented in chapter 4, I supported and presented the themes in this manner.

Theme XYX:

About theme XYZ, participant #1 said in the Hindi language: "yehi sacchi baat hai (this is the truth)" (personal communication, June 6, 2019).

So, first I wrote the English version of the original language, also called as transliteration, and then in the parentheses, I wrote the actual English translation.

Amazing to have these feedback in here. Thank you very much.

Need help !!!

I am planning to conduct all the interviews in participants' native language because I share the same language. I am planning to translate all the transcripts into English by myself. For the reliability of the translation, how many translated transcripts (%) should I given to accredited translator for its reliability (back translation). Can you please help me in this regard or you can provide me the appropriate resource.

Thank you.

PhD Candidate

Hi, I'm having a similar dilemma too. I did interviews in Spanish, which is not my native language and so far I have just done a summary translation in English of what was said in English. For quotations to be used in the thesis, I will obviously translate these. I know that I may lose some of the meaning but I do not know whether I will have the time to transcribe c30 foreign language interviews and then translate them to English.

I just finished my dissertation in which a few interviews were in foreign language. This is what I did, and it worked like a charm.

1. Code all interviews in their original language - without translation. In this, you will not loose the meaning.

2. Translate with great accuracy, only those parts of the foreign-language-interviews that you would like to use it as quotes. This is so much easier compared to translating all interviews.

I think it depend on different factors like position of the researcher and the ability of both languages, who did the interview and the analysis approach that you intend to follow. I would prefer to transcribe to the language of the paper directly if I am not insider researcher, bilingual, the researcher did the interview and know what he is looking for.

It's not just translating - transmuted text, transliteration, cultural decoding are all a part of the process involved. I would second Gopesh Sharma's recommendation.

First - Coding all interviews verbatim helps retain the originality of the interview. As qualitative researchers, we can fall back on the original text when required.

Second - Once we group into preliminary codes, we can then turn to translation. But, cultural coding is also required since the originality of what was meant and hence interpreted should be conveyed 'as-is' to the reader. This process is quite time-consuming and yet gives an insight into the culture and the meanings generated therein.

I'm sharing an article that could be helpful in deciphering bilingual interview data.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ800191.pdf

Hope this helps.

It is vital to translate the scripts into the language of the dissertation so that the audience to which your addressing your research could see and appreciate your contribution.

In my study, what I did was to code the transcripts using the original language, then translate only the parts that I used as quotes for my discussion. It worked well.