Designing Multilingual Questionnaires for Translation and Interpreting Studies:

A Reflective Paper Based on a Survey of Swiss Federal Translators’ Profiles and Needs

Abstract

Questionnaire translation has mostly been theorised about outside translation and interpreting studies (TIS). While solid academic work on effective cross-national and cross-cultural social science questionnaires has flourished over the last decades, little attention has been paid so far to small-scale questionnaires for TIS purposes. After reviewing the main approaches to questionnaire translation and framing this practice from a TIS perspective, this paper reports on the multilingual design process of a questionnaire distributed to translators working for the Swiss Confederation. It focuses on some key challenges that TIS scholars may face, such as budget and time constraints. Despite limited resources, however, some strategies for designing good multilingual questionnaires are proposed. Overall, translation proves to be an invaluable tool to improve the quality of a survey. In this respect, it is important to raise awareness among universities and funders of the importance of supporting quality questionnaire translation to ensure quality research.