Nice and Tidy: Translation and Representation

Across many disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies and sociolinguistics, writers and researchers are concerned with how language is used to construct representations of people in written and oral accounts. There is also increasing interest in cross-disciplinary approaches to language and representation in research. Within health, social care and housing research there is a rapidly growing volume of writing on, and sometimes with, people whose first language is not English. However, much empirical research in these fields remains at the level of 'findings' about groups of people with the issue of how they are represented remaining unexamined. In this article I discuss some of the different ways researchers have looked at issues of translation and representation across languages. As I show, some researchers have attempted to ignore or by-pass these issues in their research, some have given up the task as impossible and others have attempted the impossible. I argue that, although there can be no single 'correct' way for researchers to represent people who speak different languages, choices about how to do this have epistemological and ethical implications.Language; Minority Ethnic Communities; Representation; Translation; Reflexivity.

Interpreting Trust: Abstract and Personal Trust for People Who Need Interpreters to Access Services

This article looks at the political and conceptual process of trust drawing on a research project exploring the experiences of people who speak little English and thus need interpreters in order to access services. We examine posited solidarity/diversity tensions in the politicisation of notions of general social trust, and debates about the process of trust, including distinctions between abstract and personal trust, the role of familiarity, and the concept of 'active trust', as well as challenges to the functional link between interpretation and expectation in trust. We address the increasing professionalisation of interpreting service provision based on abstract trust, and use case studies to illustrate the complexity of the articulation of trust in interpreters, often involving personal trust, as well as strategies for managing distrust. We conclude that, while trust may be a personal praxis, it takes place in a particular socio-political context that involves asymmetrical relations that focus on particular, minority ethnic, groups.Interpreters, Professionalisation, Solidarity/diversity, Trust

The Same but Different—Researching Language and Culture in the Lives of Polish People in England

This article is concerned with issues of representation within cross language research. We examine research that suggests people may present themselves differently in different languages. Moreover, it has been argued that translators/researchers produce accounts of people's lives rather than just describe them within their translations. These representational moves by both research participants and researchers across languages have consequences for research findings. We illustrate our arguments in relation to research with Polish speakers in Greater Manchester, England and argue for issues of interpretation and translation within narrative research to move out of methodological notes to become central concerns within research processes. We argue particularly against the treatment of language as an undifferentiated medium and the view that anyone who can speak a language can unproblematically represent all speakers of that language. All languages are internally differentiated and who translates influences the findings. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs090131

The Devil in the Detail: An Account of Self-Harm

In this article we discuss self-harm data from an A & E (Emergency Room) Department in an English hospital. In order to be able to examine the relationship between data collection, analysis and findings we focus on the processes we used as researchers in constructing the dataset. Doing this, we argue, is as important as just analysing findings since this process in part constructs the findings. Moreover, how people\u27s actions are defined may impact on the way they are treated