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Sociology of Health & Illness Vol. 24 No. 6 2002 ISSN 0141–9889, pp. 842–855
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Translating culture and language: a research
note on multilingual settings
Hannah Bradby
Department of Sociology, University of Warwick
Abstract
Language and translation are not treated as part of the
problematic in sociological research when compared with that of
social anthropology, and this relative inattention can be related to
the parallel development of the two disciplines. Ethnographic
evidence from studies of identity, social support and wellbeing
among Glasgow Punjabis suggests that the complex and strategic
blending and switching of vocabulary, tone and accent is one
means through which identities and support networks are
negotiated and affirmed. The hybrid use of language can and
should be reflected in the way that research is conducted with
multilingual communities and some preliminary suggestions
are made.
Keywords: translation, interpretation, language, British Asian
Introduction
Evidence of the content and context of spoken language of one particular
minority ethnic group (British Asians) suggests that hybridity is a feature of
the cultural repertoires used to negotiate the various demands and rewards
of social participation with the majority (English-speaking) and minority
communities.
The strategic mixing of aspects of language and the relationship of language with identity has not been a preoccupation of British medical sociology, even when non-English-speaking groups are the focus of research. The
legacy of this lack of attention may be reflected in the difficulties evident in
conceiving of minority ethnic identities as strategically hybrid. In this paper
I will describe examples of the way that hybrid processes are reflected in the
content and the context of spoken language, drawing on research with people
of Punjabi descent in Glasgow. This will be followed by brief examples of
how some limited mixing of minority language and English can facilitate
communication during the research process.
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd/Editorial Board 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road,
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Translating culture and language
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Language and culture
Sociology’s lack of interest in language (Heilbron 1999) stands in contrast
to the ongoing attention paid to language in social anthropology and could
be related to the tendency, particularly in the first half of the 20th century,
of the British anthropologist to research abroad, while the sociologist did so
at home. Speaking in 1950, Evans-Pritchard described sociology as ‘very
specialised, being a study of isolated problems, such as divorce, crime, insanity, labour unrest’, in contrast to social anthropology ‘which chiefly devotes
itself to primitive societies’ aiming to study them ‘as wholes’ and ‘directly’
(Evans-Pritchard 1951). He goes on to assert that
. . . any anthropologist worth his salt will make the learning of it
[language] his first task and will altogether, even at the beginning of his
study, dispense with interpreters
on the grounds that
to understand a people’s thought one has to think in their symbols. Also,
in learning the language one learns the culture and the social system
which are conceptualized in the language (Evans-Pritchard 1951: 79).
The idea that a comprehension of a people’s social and physical universe
is not only a matter of gaining linguistic competence, but involves also
understanding the associations and resonance of words and phrases, became
a touchstone of anthropology. From Malinowski onwards, language has
been a central part of the anthropological enterprise, and an integral part of
the problematic. Compared with sociology, anthropological literature treats
the relationship between language and culture, identity and the epistemology
and ontology of translation in depth (Phillips 1959, Beattie 1964, EvansPritchard 1965, Ardener 1971, Henson 1973, Asad 1986).
Current sociology does not confine itself to social problems and works
across language barriers, but arguably the lack of critical attention given to
the process of linguistic translation and its articulation with the translation
of cultural processes persists, as noted by bilingual sociologists (Temple
1997, Birbili 2000). The historical processes by which a discipline comes to
encompass certain approaches and topics is not the subject of this short
paper beyond noting that the study of variations in spoken language by
gender, ethnic group, social class and nationality has been the domain of
linguistics, creating the sub-discipline of sociolinguistics (Trudgill 1995).
While this should not necessarily have put the topic out of bounds to sociologists, perhaps combined with the assimilationism that influenced early
thinking about migrants from the New Commonwealth and Pakistan to
Britain (Mason 1999, Ballard 1994), existing communication barriers were
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Hannah Bradby
assumed to be a temporary problem that would disappear with the arrival
of the British-born generation into adulthood.
Anthropological (e.g. Werbner 1990, Shaw 2000) and sociological work
(e.g. Rex and Moore 1967) on migrants from South Asia showed how an
assimilationist model failed to account for unfolding events. But the assumption that migrants ought to assimilate can still be detected at various levels
of the welfare state, from David Blunkett’s recent pronouncements on marriage patterns for British Asians to the reactions of some service providers to
illnesses that disproportionately affect minority groups. For instance, solutions to a variety of problems in patients of South Asian descent, including
rickets and congenital problems, propose the patients changing aspects of
their lifestyle, such as diet or marriage, to more closely resemble the habits
of the ethnic majority. The dubious quality of evidence for such solutions
and the possible alternative health risk they imply, have been described
elsewhere (Ahmad 1992, 1993, Donovan 1984). Assimilationism was (until
recently?), at work in school education where bilingualism has been problematised as an impediment to school learning and the hybrid communication of multilinguals regarded as an impure form of communication that
was both confused and confusing (Project 1985, Rampton 1995). While it is
hoped that assimilationism no longer characterises health or education policy
for any minority group, the legacy of assuming minority linguistic status to
be a temporary state of affairs is arguably seen in the far from universal
access to interpretation services in the British National Health Service,
despite longstanding research evidence of associated poor health outcomes
(Bradby 2001).
This paper does not attempt to chart sociological inattention to language,
nor to chart the epistemological or ontological accounts of language covered
in anthropological work. The more limited aim is to give a sketch of how
spoken language in a British city describes the complex and strategic means
whereby young people of Asian origin are negotiating their majority and
minority identities. Interest in cultural hybridity in diasporic and transglobal
communities over the last decade (Werbner and Modood 1997) provides a
rich background for current studies of identity, racism and wellbeing. While
the limits of cultural hybridity as a theoretical and practical model should
be borne in mind (Werbner 2001), hybridity should be reflected in the
research process as well as research findings, with appropriate languagemixes reflected in the formulation of qualitative and quantitative interviews.
Below, some background on the Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi-speaking
population in Glasgow precedes a description of specific spoken-language
strategies observed during a qualitative study of young South Asian women.
The knowledge and experience of spoken South Asian languages was
subsequently used to inform the wording of a structured interview used
with a similar group (further details below). The initial qualitative project
concerned social support, food and identity (Bradby 1997). Participantobservation in various social settings (Sikh Temple, Mosque women’s group,
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Punjabi lessons and other secular community gatherings such as talent
shows and markets), over a number of years was combined with semistructured interviews with 20- to 30-year-old women (repeat interviews conducted with 32 women), all of whom spoke Punjabi, Hindi and/or Urdu,
most of whom spoke some English, about three-quarters being fluent. All
research materials were translated jointly by the author and Maya Varyani,
a trained multilingual interviewer, and checked by another Punjabi and/or
Urdu speaker.
Language variation and change in multilingual settings
Features of spoken language change constantly and the Hindi/Urdu and
Punjabi spoken by migrants and migrants’ children in Glasgow has developed differently compared with non-migrant peers in India and Pakistan
and the diaspora elsewhere. Given the long-standing presence of English
speakers in the Indian subcontinent, words have long been borrowed between languages, a process which has continued in the British context.
In the Punjab/Haryana area of the northern Indian subcontinent Hindi,
Urdu and Punjabi have been described as forming a language continuum
(Project 1985: 44). Hindi and Urdu are mutually comprehensible in the
spoken form and Punjabi is a close sister-language. Differences between the
languages, for instance in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation, have been
magnified for political and religious reasons, particularly since Pakistan
became an independent Muslim state (Wardhaugh 1986: 26).
The Punjabi language has different political significance for Sikhs and
Muslims. Punjabi is the language of the Sikh religion in which the ‘Granth
Sahib’ or holy text is written, using the Gourmoukhi script, and it has
resonance as part of the claim of Sikh Punjabis for a Khalistani state, independent from India. As the language associated with religious observance,
young Sikhs in Glasgow can learn written and spoken Punjabi at templesponsored classes. By contrast, Punjabi is largely a spoken language for
Muslim Punjabis of Pakistani origin, being seen as less prestigious than
Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, with an older associated literature
and closer links with Persian and Arabic. It was not unusual for aspirant
Pakistani parents to speak Urdu with their children, despite speaking to
one another, to peers and to elders, in Punjabi. Arabic is the language of the
Qu’ran which young Muslims are encouraged to learn to read aloud. The
Islamic emphasis on reading the Qu’ran in the language in which it was
written is explicitly to avoid its message being altered through translation.
Glasgow’s population includes about 2.5 per cent (Glasgow 1997) of South
Asian origin, the vast majority of whom are Punjabi. Punjabis from the
Pakistani and Indian sides of the border live and work in close proximity
although the similarity of their spoken Punjabi is sometimes denied. A
Muslim described ‘Indian people’ speaking Punjabi as ‘like pots and pans
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Hannah Bradby
banging together’, but agreed that she could easily converse with her Sikh
neighbours. The different ways in which Punjabi informs Sikh and Muslim
identity underlie such denials of mutual comprehension, although proximity
may mean that spoken Punjabi in Glasgow may be becoming more similar
in a number of ways, particularly among the British-born generations.
The common British context promotes borrowing similar vocabulary
from English, for instance Punjabi-speaking women described their diet as
including ‘baked beans’, ‘veggie burgers’ and ‘fish and chips’, and explained
the role their ‘freezer’ and ‘washing machine’ played in the domestic routine.
Such foods and machines were rarely seen in the rural Punjab from which
women had migrated a decade or more previously, and although they could
be described in Punjabi, the English terms were more familiar and convenient. In some cases these nouns were then ‘Punjabified’, for instance the term
‘fish finger’ treated as a Punjabi noun in the singular, becomes ‘fish fingerañ’
in the plural. Other words borrowed from English do not describe anything
new, but seem to offer a more direct expression compared with the Punjabi
alternative. For instance the words ‘pregnant’ and ‘pregnancy’ are very
widely used by speakers of Punjabi who tend to regard the Punjabi phrase
‘peth se hun’ (‘I am with stomach’) as coy and old-fashioned. Similarly ‘I am
busy’ can be translated into Punjabi as ‘kam maiñ lagi pari hun’ (‘I have some
work to do’), but in fact ‘maiñ kaafi busy hun’ is the preferred expression in
conversation, with women saying the latter expression was ‘easier and quicker’.
Part of the common context for Punjabis is racism which assumes that
all ‘Asians’ are the same, and therefore speak the same language. Racist
assumptions from the majority can force people to dwell on what they have
in common, including language. This was acknowledged in speaking about
‘we Asian people . . .’ or ‘hum Asian log . . .’, in both English and Punjabilanguage interviews. Punjabis visit food, jewellery and sari shops, cinemas,
community centres and the annual ‘Asian Mela’ regardless of their religion.
The pursuit of employment in similar sectors and of housing in the same
areas of the inner-city has promoted friendly relations between families of
different backgrounds as demonstrated by the provision of vegetarian food
at lavish (non-vegetarian) Sikh weddings for Muslim guests (as well as for
devout Sikhs). Common political and business interests discussed in Punjabi
may bring about a ‘rapprochement’ in the older generation’s language.
Among the younger generation, friendships that cross religious boundaries
were reflected in shared vocabulary and idiom when discussing the ‘auntiejis’ (older women whose bad opinion was to be avoided), when imitating
their elders’ Punjabi accented English (Hello-ji!) and the coy love-scenes in
Bollywood films: (‘I lub you’).
Words borrowed from English may increase the common ground between
spoken forms of Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu and can be used to avoid marking
a Pakistani/Muslim versus an Indian/Sikh or Hindu background. For instance,
by employing ‘busy’ as in ‘maiñ kaafi busy hun’, speakers can avoid
designating a Pakistani/Muslim identity, with the Urdu term ‘mushroof’ or
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an Indian/Sikh or Hindu identity with the Hindi term ‘mushgool’ (as in
‘maiñ mushroof/mushgool hun’).
This type of borrowing of words between languages, known as codeswitching, is described in sociolinguistics as a local communicative, pragmatic switch to the language in which bilinguals or multilinguals know a
relevant vocabulary to be more precise, or more able to discuss a particular
topic (Miller 1983, Haugen 1987, Heller 1988). Sociologically more interesting reasons identified for code-switching include adding emphasis, a demonstration of intimacy and solidarity with other bilinguals (Hoffman 1991),
the management of conflict and the exploitation of humorous possibilities
(Heller 1988). Beyond simple code-switching, bilinguals may translate their
sense of themselves and their place in society in a variety of ways which are
considered below: rapid changes between two vocabularies can be combined
with combinations of the varieties and styles within the two languages that
can colour meaning and tone. Glaswegian Punjabi women made use of all
these possibilities as strategic performers of language, using it to include and
exclude themselves and others in various social settings.
Young women spoke both Punjabi and English with inclusive and exclusive effect. Punjabi was used in public settings to exclude ‘gorian’ (‘fair ones’
or ‘white folk’), for instance, when women who usually spoke English
together, discussed the quality of merchandise in ear-shot of non-Asian shop
assistants. Punjabi was also used to mark inclusion, both to the ethnic and
family group. Children who spoke very little Punjabi were drilled in addressing their elders in the appropriate tone and variety, since mothers viewed the
expression of respect as a priority for their children’s language learning.
Young women who referred to themselves as ‘not your traditional Asian
lassie’ and who rarely spoke their parents’ language described the comfort
of returning home to be fed ‘roti’ (chapatti-based meal), to watch Hindi
movies and chat with their Punjabi-speaking mothers. While these women
were not interested in traditionally arranged marriages, or their parents’
religion, they still wanted their children to be able to ‘speak Indian’ so they
too could enjoy these comforts.
English, of a Glaswegian variety, was spoken between peers rapidly and
with plenty of slang, when discussing matters about which young people
wished their parents to remain ignorant, such as ongoing flirtations. Confident use of Glaswegian vernacular on the streets in response to racist and
sexist comments marked a more aggressive form of exclusion, described as
very effective because of the boldness with which it marked their possession
of a Glasgow identity. When ‘neds’ (local term for ‘yobs’) shouted ‘Paki,
bastard, wog’ in town, young women described ‘giving back a mouthful’,
such as ‘go fuck yourself’ or ‘piss off’ in a broad Glasgow accent, and the
‘gob-smacked, dropped-jaw’ effect this produced. They interpreted their
abusers’ shock as arising from the widely-held expectation that Asianlooking girls would be meek and passive and, if they spoke English at all, it
would be quietly, with a pronounced Pakistani or Indian accent. Their loud
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Hannah Bradby
and pithy street talk marked them as clearly Glaswegian, thereby confounding stereotyped expectations. Demonstration of an insider’s understanding
of Punjabi identity, of racist stereotypes, and of fluent English was another
strategy for rebutting racist comments. Sisters of Indian descent who were
called ‘Paki’ on the street would reply ‘I’m not a Paki, I’m Indian’. Similarly,
a woman of Pakistani descent whose daughter was addressed in the street
as: ‘an Indie . . . who looks like a white wee lassie’ responded with exaggerated courtesy ‘She’s not Indian, she’s Pakistani, but thank you very much
for your compliment’, thereby refusing to accept the pejorative implication
of the address, but taking the remark about her daughter being white as
equivalent to the Hindi/Urdu term ‘gori’ (fair). Similarly, two women who
understood the term ‘Paki’ to be pejorative, refused to accept the insult
because ‘it is apparent that we are Pakistani’. They responded with: ‘Alright,
I’m Paki, so what? I know I’m Paki, I know now that you know as well!’
turning the insult into an implication of stupidity on the part of the racist1.
The use of English or Punjabi simultaneously marked women’s solidarity
with other bilinguals and their difference both from the migrant generation
who were not so at ease in English, and from the ethnic majority who did
not understand Punjabi. This is exemplified by Bhangra music which is
based on Punjabi folk tunes, but incorporates aspects of other popular music
such as hip-hop, English language lyrics and samples from non-Punjabi
music. Speaking English in a way that imitates the register or tone of their
elders is another example of bilinguals’ spoken language. During discussion
about ethnic identity when various young people had described their own
backgrounds, laughter was provoked by a Hindu, putting on a thick Indian
accent, and shouting out ‘Indian! I am Indian!’ imitating the obsessively
patriotic Indian in BBC television’s ‘Goodness gracious me!’. Hindi and
Urdu, unlike contemporary varieties of English, are able to convey the relative social status of the speaker and the person being addressed because of
the retention of a variety of pronouns. Hindi/Urdu has three levels that can
be specified in the second person (‘tu’ for children, ‘tum’ for equals and ‘aap’
to express respect) and in addition to pronoun distinctions, the difference
between the formal and informal varieties is much more marked than in
English. To be able to speak Hindi or Urdu in a way that offers each interlocutor the appropriate respect can be a sign of refinement and education.
The highly respectful and poetic forms of address used in formal Urdu can
seem overblown and pompous when translated into English, an opportunity
for hilarity exploited, for instance, by a British-born woman imitating her
elders’ accent and asking ‘And what is your very good name?’
Appropriate language in research questions
These observations of the form and vocabulary of language used by
Glasgow South Asians was fed back into the formulation of appropriate
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questions and responses in a subsequent quantitative project. A survey of
20- to 40-year-old women, of Italian, South Asian and ethnic majority origin, concerning food choice, health and identity used a structured questionnaire that was administered by trained interviewers, containing both closed
and open questions (Bush et al. 1995). Pre-translated schedules for use with
South Asian women were commissioned from local-authority-employed
professional translators – one Hindi expert and one Urdu expert. The translations were modified by the author and Maya Varyani and the resulting
schedules were subject to validation and further amendment during the
training of the multilingual interviewers. The process of redrafting revealed
discrepancies between the professionally translated version and the version
which would be most comprehensible locally.
Hybrid translations
The initial translation received from the professional translators used formal, often literary, language with the Hindi version using words of Sanskrit
origin, and the Urdu version having a more Persian-influenced vocabulary
and negligible English or Punjabi vocabulary. Although we had requested
that both translations have a ‘Punjabi/Glaswegian’ flavour, to reflect the
local spoken language, this proved to be impossible since the mixing of
languages would have represented a failure of the translators’ skills in interpreting terms and phrases between languages. Subsequent versions from the
translators employed a less literary or formal vocabulary (but were still ‘pure
Hindi’ and ‘pure Urdu’), and we substituted English and Punjabi words and
phrases where appropriate. Some of these were substitutions of single words
which Punjabi-speakers used in everyday conversation, such as: ‘pregnancy’,
‘diabetes’ and ‘TV’. Others were more complex because they touched on the
issue of whether an English-language social category could be described in
Punjabi and vice versa. Three examples are outlined below.
Marital status: Marital status is known to be relevant to health, both
physical and mental for men and women in the general population, and is
routinely and widely asked about. British social surveys, including ours,
differentiate between ‘married’, ‘divorced’, ‘widowed’ and ‘single’ and having a partner to whom one is not married. The translation of ‘partner’ into
Punjabi proved difficult because, until recently, marriage has been almost
universal in Punjabi society. ‘Jeevan saathi’, meaning ‘lifetime companion’,
was the translation of ‘partner’ used in our survey questionnaire and
appeared quite regularly as a catch-all term in questions referring to husbands and partners alike. However, interviewers reported that they routinely
substituted the English term ‘husband’ because ‘jeevan saathi’ sounded
either hopelessly romantic, or carried the insulting implication that the
interviewee was not properly married.
‘Single’, meaning ‘never married’, was initially translated as ‘kuvari’ and
while this is correct in that ‘kuvari’ means an unmarried or single woman,
it also carries connotations which correspond more closely to ‘virgin’ in
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Hannah Bradby
contemporary English. Since the survey sample of women’s names had been
taken from the register of births, the implication of not having experienced
sexual intercourse did not make sense, so we substituted ‘nahiñ shadi-shuda’
or ‘not married’. Back translation of ‘nahiñ shadi-shuda’ might have led to
confusion between the ‘unmarried, cohabiting’ option, and the ‘single’ option,
but this confusion did not arise since all the Asian respondents were or had
been married.
In-laws: Previous survey findings having suggested that married migrant
women lacked social support which was linked with poor mental health
(Williams et al. 1997), we were interested in how this might have changed for a
younger generation of women. The qualitative study had suggested that women’s
marital status was relevant because of the different obligations and support
associated with their family of origin and their husband’s family. Women’s
accounts of these differences were informed by their interpretation of the
traditional patterns together with the constraints and opportunities presented
by migration which could lead to a woman’s agnates and affines being in separate
continents. We tried to map some patterns of social support, which necessitated
specifying relations via a woman’s mother, her father and her husband.
The English term ‘grandfather’ when translated into Hindi includes
‘dada’ (father’s father) and ‘nana’ (mother’s father). Similarly, ‘sister-in-law’
includes four Hindi terms that differentiate between relations through one’s
husband and those that are married into one’s natal family (see Figure 1).
Traditionally a woman’s status in a multigenerational patrilocal household
was influenced by the position of her husband with respect to his brothers,
with the oldest brother’s wife being formally senior to the younger brother’s
wife, both of whom were junior to the father’s wife, their mother-in-law.
In the survey schedule the non-specificity of the English terms ‘grandfather’
and ‘sister-in-law’ presented a problem in that the professional translator
Figure 1 Hindi terms corresponding to ‘grandfather’ and ‘sister-in-law’ in English
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had substituted ‘nana’ and ‘nanand’. The loss of several types of sister-in-law
and one type of grandfather from the Hindi-language schedule compared
with the English-language version might not have been noticed if it had been
validated using back-translation alone as ‘nanand’ could be translated back
to the more general ‘sister-in-law’ without problem.
In unstructured, qualitative interviews, the use of English terms to refer
to groups of family was useful in opening questions. However, where a
woman with more than one sister-in-law spoke of ‘meri sister-in-law’, subsequent interpretation of transcripts was facilitated by checking which one
was under discussion, for instance by referring to ‘aap ki jitani’ rather than
‘aap ki sister-in-law’. Similarly, when conducting interviews in English, it
was sometimes illuminating to use the Hindi/Urdu terms to clarify whether
a woman was referring to her ‘jitani’ or ‘devrani’.
Anthropological debate as to whether it is meaningful to compare categories between cultures (for a recent summary see Parkin 1997) would
imply caution in drawing conclusions about equivalence between Hindi/
Urdu and English terms for sister-in-law. However, the readiness with which
women used the terms interchangeably implied that they saw them as appropriate interpretations, even if not exact equivalents.
Kinship and/or friendship? We were interested in whether women had supportive relationships beyond their relatives, but enquiring about ‘friends’
(saheliañ) elicited responses about ‘meri sister/sister-in-law’. The Englishlanguage distinction that can be drawn between ‘family/kin’ and ‘friend/
non-kin’ did not easily translate into the Glasgow Punjabi social setting.
While non-Asian families may refer to family-friends as ‘auntie’ and ‘uncle’
as a means of conveying a close and affectionate relationship, the tendency
is far more marked among South Asians. Anyone in a friendly and/or
supportive relationship was referred by a kinship term such as ‘auntie’,
‘uncle’ or ‘bhain’ (sister), usually suffixed with -ji indicating respect. Having
been established by relatively recent migration from a circumscribed area
of the Punjab and being a small population, many Glasgow Punjabis are
related to one another through common ancestors or marriage. The system
of reciprocal exchange of gifts and services known as ‘lena-dena’ serves to
strengthen existing relationships, and can incorporate families who are on
friendly terms but not linked by marriage, by contracting appropriate
marriages. Unmarried women had close friends, with whom they had no
relationship by marriage or common ancestor, and had met through school
or work. After marriage, however, these friendships proved difficult to
maintain.
Concluding remarks
The tendency to ignore the process of moving between languages, including
the process and effect of working with translators, in research methodology
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Hannah Bradby
may be related to a more general lack of attention to language in sociology.
Applying sociological interest to language and translation responds to
exhortations to study ethnicity as complex, situational and hybridising
and to finally abandon categorisations that imply mutual exclusivity and
immutability.
Some of the ways that spoken language indexes young Glasgow Punjabis’
identity in terms of generation, gender, local attachment, minority status
and resistance to racism, have been described. The overlap between the
languages spoken by multilinguals can increase when spoken in a common
British urban setting, particularly when that setting, such as Glasgow, has a
strong identity expressed in a local vernacular.
An understanding of the ways that language is spoken should, of course,
inform how interview questions are asked in quantitative and qualitative
research. The ability to glean clues about social structures from language,
and to use mixed language in conducting research, does not necessitate
the researcher being a skilled linguist him or herself, although any knowledge is helpful. Ongoing global movements of migrants and refugees
imply that linguistic diversity will continue to be a feature of the British
population. If research into the sociology of health and illness is to reflect
the range of languages spoken in Britain, it is difficult to follow EvansPritchard’s advice to ‘dispense with interpreters’. A good working relationship
with an interpreter is essential and this, of course, depends upon a number
of factors, some of which cannot be prescribed. Co-operative working,
however, is more likely to develop where the researcher appreciates the
interpreter’s role as actively participative, and their own role in interpreting
sociological concepts for the interpreter. The cost of an interpreter and
the time required to establish useful dialogue about language is not
always included in research proposals and can represent a considerable
investment.
The sociology of health and medicine is not peculiar in its neglect of
language and translation (Temple 1997), but the concentration of medical
sociological research and teaching in anglophone countries, the high status
of English as a global language and the sometimes unthinking use of
interpreters in health care settings (Foong 1992), as in sociology in general
(Heilbron 1999), may permit unreflective research and writing to persist.
However, the interest in the communicative encounter in medical sociology,
with the recognition of the influence power differentials have on communication makes attention to language a potentially fruitful concern. Since ‘no
translation is ever innocent’, always ‘implying a reading, a choice . . . a redefinition’, and since ‘culture is defined by that which it can name’ (Manguel
1996), the processes of translation should be part of reflexive methodology.
Bakhtin’s observation (1981: 360) that the hybridising process of language
mixing opens up new world views, points to the ways that close understanding of the navigation across languages can be a central, compelling and
creative aspect of multilingual research.
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Address for correspondence: Hannah Bradby, Department of Sociology,
University of Warwick, Coventry, CV5 6GL.
e-mail:[email protected]
Acknowledgements
Maya Varyani, whose skills include speaking at least 5 languages, translating, interpreting and interviewing, has been an invaluable colleague. My gratitude goes to the
many people who have discussed ideas in this paper, first presented at a British
Sociological Association Medical Sociology Group conference, particularly to Rory
Williams who, as usual, has offered precise and insightful comments on several
drafts. Constructive and detailed comments from a number of anonymous referees
have contributed greatly to the re-writing process.
Some of the examples in this paper are from the study Dietary Change in South
Asian and Italian Women in the West of Scotland funded by the ESRC as part of
The Nation’s Diet: the Social Science of Good Choice research programme. The
remainder of the work was carried out while the author was supported by a research
studentship from the Medical Research Council and based at the Social and Public
Health Sciences (formerly Medical Sociology) Unit at Glasgow University.
Note
1 The effect of racism on women’s health was a focus of interest for our project.
Only in one case (where the harassment took a non-verbal form – persistent
rattling of the letter box through which rubbish was posted by local children –
and where she excluded her children from group play) did a woman report that it
had affected her wellbeing (in combination with family difficulties).
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