For New York City, by New York City: A Collaborative and Local Approach to Survey Translation

In multilingual areas, accurate questionnaire translation is as essential for survey quality as the wording of the source questionnaire. Across languages, questions must convey the intent of the question in a way that is linguistically and culturally relevant to the respondent. While there are a wide variety of approaches to questionnaire translation, advance translation offers the opportunity to translate early in the questionnaire development process and address any language or cultural barriers prior to finalizing survey content. While the methodology for advance translation was developed for translation of many dominant languages across a diverse continent, adaptation of advance translation to the United States, where there is no official language and large immigrant communities speak a wide range of languages, requires careful consideration and adjustments. In this paper, we discuss the advance translation process used for the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (NYCHVS), including the steps taken during the translation process, the adjustments made to account for the diversity within and across languages in New York City, and the outcomes of the process that continue to influence translation and survey design of the NYCHVS.