Language barriers and qualitative nursing research: methodological considerations.

During qualitative research, language helps participants represent their sense of self. Language allows them to communicate similarities and differences to others, including the researcher (Gee 1990; Temple & Young 2004). Through spoken interactions, the language of participants helps define and explain issues related to their ethnicity, heritage, gender and other components of their identity (Gee 1990; Hole 2007; Temple 2002). For qualitative nurse researchers, when the participant speaks a different language than the researcher, ‘it is more appropriate for researchers to use the language of the informant to obtain an understanding of health experiences and perceptions of health care’ (Twinn 1997, p. 419). The term ‘cross-language research’ describes studies in which a language barrier is present between qualitative researchers and their participants (Larson 1998; Temple 2002). Experienced cross-language qualitative researchers understand that when they conduct studies with participants who speak another language, they have a responsibility to maintain the integrity and credibility of translated qualitative data. Inexperienced cross-language qualitative researchers often wrongly assume that a translator or interpreter will resolve any methodological issues related to language barriers between qualitative study participants and researchers (Temple 2002; Temple & Young 2004; Yach 1992). With words as data, however, language barriers between nurse researchers and participants become a potentially formidable methodological challenge. Translators and interpreters provide similar services to overcome language barriers between two or more people. Their roles in research, however, are distinct. An interpreter provides oral translation services during an interaction between two or more people who do not speak the same language. A translator provides services translating documents, including transcribed interviews. The distinct nature of their roles affects data quality and may influence responses of study participants and the research process. A central concern with using translators and interpreters is that the quality of data translation can affect the conceptual equivalence and accuracy of the study's findings (Fredrickson et al. 2005; Schultz 2004; Temple 2002). Therefore, a researcher's failure to systematically address language barriers during cross-language research threatens the credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability of the findings. With just these few methodological concerns, it is not surprising that many monolingual qualitative researchers may hesitate to pursue a cross-language qualitative study (Adamson & Donovan 2002; Esposito 2001; Lange 2002; Twinn 1997). Numerous individual articles describe the different methodological challenges that cross-language research presents. This article synthesizes the recommendations from the research methods literature addressing language barriers and qualitative research. It begins with a description of the basics of language competence and reviews the criteria for translator and interpreter qualifications. The succeeding section provides a discussion of translator and interpreter roles during various points in the research process, ethical considerations, and the use of translators and interpreters in the various qualitative research approaches. Qualitative nurse researchers seeking to expand their research to groups that speak a different language than themselves will find the content useful for developing a cross-language qualitative study.