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Language and Cultural Barriers

Cross-cultural and comparative management research requires interaction with more than one cultural or linguistic group. Researchers face problems of language barriers and translation. Historically, Western scholars have often held less than positive views of other languages and cultures; however, as Western nations (i.e., Europe and North America) have gained a better understanding and awareness of different cultures, an appreciation of other nations has emerged. Today, cross-cultural research is valued for its contributions to social thought and research. For these reasons, many intercultural research projects are being conducted in the fields of business and management. However, because of difficulties that arise when translating concepts from English (the lingua franca of the business world), language barriers often prevent a true exchange of ideas and insights, especially with respect to case studies research across cultures.

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Cross-cultural research problems tend to fall into two general areas: (1) differences in language content and (2) differences in acceptable emotional expression. Mason Haire, E. E. Ghiselli, and Lyman Porter discovered these limitations in an influential international organizational research study that was designed to help U.S. expatriates work in overseas corporations. The goal of the study was to understand national managerial attitudes, discover the consequences of sending managers overseas, and understand executive development problems across cultures. After checking translation accuracy, the researchers found that there were problems conveying ideas between countries—even in the translation of common terms in organization science, such as leader and team. The study also revealed that concept meanings tended to cluster among sets of nations (i.e., Nordic Europe, Latin Europe, England, and the United States) as well as regionally (i.e., differences within Belgium).

The issues Haire and colleagues discovered still exist today. Recently, Bruce Stening and Marina Zhang reviewed some common challenges to cross-cultural research in the People's Republic of China. They noted that cultural factors often affect researchable questions and that there were challenges with data interpretation. In case research, where the importance of social construction of meaning is all important, the challenges of language barriers and translation are even greater.

Application

The most common problem facing cross-cultural research occurs in translation. When researchers use standard back-translation methods, they often run into problems of vocabulary and idiomatic and grammatical equivalence. An example of vocabulary equivalence can be found in the common English translation of the Chinese word guanxi. The English translation (“connections”) is often inadequate, because guanxi has multiple meanings depending on the context. The difficulty of capturing the connotations associated with the word autonomy when it is translated from English to Chinese also results in vocabulary disparity. Idiomatic equivalence poses its own set of challenges, because idioms vary greatly even among countries that share the same language. For example, Stening and Zhang pointed out that the saying “feeling a little crook” means different things in Australia and the United Kingdom and that to translate either meaning into a language such as Chinese would be a challenge. Finally, grammatical equivalence problems commonly occur because of tense differences. Translation problems occur even among multilingual research subjects. Research indicates that people can answer the same question differently depending on the language used to ask the question.

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