Panel 41: The changing faces of surveys and interviews as methods and text genres

In TIS, over the past 20 years, both surveys and interviews (including focus groups) have considerably changed their faces as instruments of data collection through technological advancements, including the processing and analysis of the resulting data (Dorer et al. forthcoming).

The first web-based survey in TIS was conducted in 2000 within the field of conference interpreting research (Chiaro and Nocella 2004). Nowadays, web-based surveys are common, the respective survey generator tools are easy to use and free of charge, allow for an at least partly automated data processing and require no knowledge of programming anymore. In the field of interviews, technological advancements include software for faster and easier transcription, using automated speech recognition, analysis of transcribed answers to open questions in corpora, (semi-) automated coding, or tools facilitating data organisation, interpretation and representation. Interviews are often an integral part of netnographic research in which members of online communities are interviewed in their digital spaces.

Translating and interpreting surveys and interviews are emerging fields of research in TIS. Research has been undertaken to improve the methods to translate such data-gathering instruments, for instance in large multilingual surveys, with the overall aim to enhance data comparability (Behr 2023). Appropriate methods to translate answers to interviews and other open questions are decisive for analysing this data in multilingual contexts (Dorer 2021). Interpreting and sight translation during interviews in multilingual settings is a challenging task knowing that any misinterpreting may have an immediate impact on the data gathered.

The panel invites presentations both with a focus on surveys and interviews as methods and as text genres to be translated and interpreted.

Possible topics may include, but certainly are not limited to:

• Designing and testing surveys and interviews
• Advantages and disadvantages of the use of technology in surveys and interviews
• Presentations of studies applying surveys or interviews, in traditional and advanced technological settings
• Integrating surveys and interviews in Mixed-Methods or Multi-Method research
• Software for gathering, processing, analysing and presenting data, including AI
• Intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translation of instruments, data collected and results obtained
• History or evolution of surveys and interviews in TIS as well as research into translating/interpreting them as text genres

References

Behr, Dorothée. 2023. "Translating Questionnaires." online first. In: International Handbook of Behavioral Health Assessment, edited by Christian U. Krägeloh, Mohsen Alyami, and Oleg N. Medvedev, Cham: Springer. doi: doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89738-3_2-1.

Chiaro, Delia, and Nocella, Giuseppe. 2004. “Interpreters’ perception of linguistic and non-linguistic factors affecting quality: A survey through the World Wide Web”. Meta 49 (2): 278-293. doi:
doi.org/10.7202/009351ar.

Dorer, Brita, Kuznik, Anna, Orrego-Carmona, David, and Zwischenberger, Cornelia. 2024 (forthcoming). “Surveys and Interviews”. In: Innovative Data Collection Methods in Cognitive Translation and Interpreting Studies, edited by Ana María Rojo López and Ricardo Muñoz Martín. John Benjamins.

Dorer, Brita. 2021. "Translating answers to open-ended questions in a multilingual survey context - Challenges and recommendations." trans-kom 14 (2): 226–256. www.trans-kom.eu/bd14nr02/trans-kom_14_02_03_Dorer_Questions.20211202.pdf.

Künzli, Alexander, and Gile, Daniel. 2021. “The impact of ICTs on surveys and interviews in Translation and Interpreting Studies. Parallèles 33(2): 18-34. doi:10.17462/para.2021.02.02.

All paper proposals must be submitted via the Oxford Abstracts conference management software, using the following link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/6903/submitter

The deadline for proposals is 26 July 2024. Applicants will be notified of the outcome by late-October/early November.