Questionnaire translation in the 3rd European

Company Survey. Conditions conducive for

the effective implementation of the TRAPD

approach

Maurizio Curtarelli and Gjis van Houten

Research officers

Working conditions and industrial relations Unit

Eurofound

ESRA Conference, Ljubljana, 15-19 July 2013

Who we are

• The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) is a European Agency, governed by a tripartite Governing Board.

• Eurofound carries out three repeated cross-sectional surveys to fulfil its mission to provide high quality information and advice to its stakeholders.

http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/surveys/index.htm.

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Eurofound surveys

• The European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) (since 1990 carried out five times; a sixth wave in 2015). Covers employment status, working time arrangements, work organisation, learning and training, physical and psychosocial risk factors, health and safety, worker participation, work-life balance, earnings and financial security, as well as work and health.

• The European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) (2003, 2007 and 2011) contains a broad range of indicators on different dimensions of quality of life, both objective and subjective.

• The European Company Survey (ECS), implemented in 2004, 2009 and now in 2013

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Eurofound surveys’ common features

• Random probability samples

• Coverage of all EU Member States as well as (potential) candidate countries and EFTA countries

• Questionnaires covering a wide range of topics designed to meet European policy needs, built on an inter-disciplinary scientific basis

• Developed in close cooperation with Eurofound’s tripartite stakeholders and experts in the field

• Elaborate strategy for quality assurance

• Timely availability of results, in reports, an online data processing tool, and by publishing the micro-data on the UK Data Archive.

Eurofound is responsible for the survey design, the quality assurance strategy, developing the questionnaire

preparation and implementation of fieldwork – including questionnaire translation - is contracted out. The contractor is a coordinating centre that coordinates a network of national fieldwork agencies in all the countries covered by the survey

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Eurofound surveys’ common features

Eurofound’s approach to translation

From completely outsourcing translation to translation agencies to a collaborative effort between the fieldwork contractor,

Eurofound staff and Eurofound’s bservatories. EWCS, EQLS and the first and second ECS: 1. For each target language, two native speakers each performed

an independent translation of questionnaire 2. A third translator then combined the two versions into one. 3. A fourth translator (not familiar with the material) then

translated the questionnaire back into English (back-translation).

4. The results of the back-translation were reviewed centrally. 5. Finally, the fieldwork contractor’s coordinating centre

approved all final target-language translations.

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TRAPD

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5th EWCS Eurofound’s correspondents from Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Observatory (EWCO) validated the translations for each language used in the EU27 and Norway

the results of this validation exercise that triggered a rethinking within Eurofound about the translation procedure that was applied, which eventually lead to the embracing of the TRAPD approach for the translation of the questionnaire for the third European Company Survey

From the BT to the TRAPD approach for the 3rd European Company Survey

• overview of workplace practices and how they are negotiated in European establishments

• New topic/each wave (workplace organisation, workplace innovation, employee participation and social dialogue in European workplaces)

• telephone interviews with both managers and employee representatives: two questionnaires developed

• Representative random sample (establishment)

• Sample from 300 establishment (Malta) up to 1,650 (DE, IT, FR, SP, PL, UK) total 30,113 establishments

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Third European Company Survey: features

• Geographical scope: countries including 27 EU Member States and Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), Iceland, Montenegro and Turkey

• 36 target languages, including the key minority or co-official languages spoken in the surveyed countries. For eight language variants, an adaptation of original translation carried out in another country

• Translation procedure: 6 – steps TRAPD

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Third European Company Survey: features

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6-steps ECS TRAPD procedure

Step 1: Translation and pre-test in DE,

FR, EN

Step 2:Translation

Step 3: Adjudication

Step 4: Harmonisation

Step 5: Review/validation

Step 6: Pilot interviews

Conclusions/lessons from the experience

• Outcome not 100% satisfactory:

In some cases, not full documentation of activities and reasoning behind their translation choices, making difficult for EF to assess the quality request for improving documentation

In some cases, national teams produced translation of lower quality and required to be revised by the corresponding national team

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Conclusions/lessons from the experience

Why? composition and level of commitment and motivation

of the national teams (mostly commercial translators)

lack of the scientific infrastructure that supports other cross-national surveys and which allows the ‘task ownership’

skill level among the members of some translation teams (language proficiency and previous translation experience) not always satisfactory

an elaborate training process was put in place

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Conclusions/lessons from the experience

rethinking of composition and rules of engagement of national team members translators with a ‘scientific’ profile or delegating experts in the translation teams should be preferred

training is important for the team members to familiarise with the survey and method of the translation procedure, create a sense of belonging, increase motivation and sense of commitment, it should be extensive, and possibly face-to-face

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Thank you!

mcr@eurofound. europa.eu

gvh@eurofound.europa.eu

www.eurofound.europa.eu

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