We've now had two days of interviewing and one afternoon of focus groups with youth and caregivers. Yesterday, I received final English transcripts from each member of the research team. They have been gathering data all week, but since everything is conducted in Dholuo, this was the first time I was able to read the interview responses. The youth and families are sharing interesting stories and experiences. After spending my time these first days primarily on logistics, it is exciting to read and begin to think about the ways we can use this information for intervention development.
The process of reading the transcripts certainly reminded me how important small differences in language can be - particularly when asking about mental health and relationships. One interview question is:
"Children often have different moods and emotions. Some are happy a lot, while other children feel sad or angry a lot of the time. Tell me about your child's mood and how he/she seems to feel most of the time."
The first time this was translated into Dholuo, we realized it actually said, "Tell me about when your child changes his or her mind." The second version asked specifically about mood swings. After a third translation yesterday, we were finally asking a general question about children's moods - a pretty important question in mental health research, but a concept that was not easily translated.
As I post this, I am trying to upload photos to Picasa...I'll let you know if it works. I've given up on Blogger - my modem is just not fast enough.
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Those are interesting observations about the need for understanding the details of how people are perceiving what they are being asked or what is being discussed. About two weeks ago I had that problem though it was in translating English to English. I was explaining how many hours a student needed of classes and her father was trying to figure out how she could go to class that many hours in in a day. I imagine the differences across languages can seem monumental.
ReplyDeleteHi, just talked with your Dad. Let him know my sister got Lauren Able (Ben’s sister) on a flight to Aranadis, Namibia a few hours ago. Lauren will be teaching first grade at Talitha Kumi School for AIDS orphans this summer. I will let Lauren know about your blog.
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