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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of electronic information resources to solve cultural translation problems at different stages of acquisition of the translator’s cultural competence.

A process and product-oriented, cross-sectional, quasi-experimental study was conducted with 38 students with German as a second foreign language from the four years of the Bachelor’s degree in Translation and Interpreting at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and ten professional translators.

Translation students use a wider variety of resources, perform more queries and spend more time on queries than translators when solving cultural translation problems. The students’ information-seeking process is generally less efficient than that of the translators. Training has little impact on the students’ use of electronic information resources for this specific purpose, since all students use them similarly regardless of the year they are in.

The study has been conducted with a small sample and only one language pair from a single pedagogical context. The tendencies observed cannot be generalised to the whole population of translation students.

This paper has implications for translator training, as it encourages the development of efficient information-seeking processes for the resolution of cultural translation problems.

Unlike other studies, this paper focusses on a specific translation problem type. It provides information related to the students’ information-seeking strategies for the resolution of cultural translation problems, which can be useful for translation training.

The purpose of this paper is to break the silence surrounding the politics of translation that influence cross-language/cultural accounting research. It gives due consideration to the ways in which translation gaps are produced and re-produced in qualitative interdisciplinary accounting research (IAR).

First, the authors discuss backstage insights and the authors’ own life experiences vis-à-vis translating cross-cultural/language research. The authors provide a critical self-reflection on the process as non-Western female researchers publishing in English-language accounting journals. Second, the authors carry out a content analysis to examine reported translation practices in three long-established interdisciplinary accounting journals from 2015 to 2017. The conclusion integrates these analyses to discuss the reproduction process of the translation gap in accounting research and its outcomes.

The study identifies inherent contradictions in IAR and its emancipatory agenda, where translation gaps are structural outcomes of overlaps between the politics of translation and the politics of publishing IAR. The study highlights the IAR community’s lack of awareness regarding political and methodological sensitivities in dealing with particularities in cultural contexts. The authors argue that this reflects the institutional norms for publishing in IAR, which contributes to neutralising cultural diversity and complex translation processes in the name of objectivity. This could ultimately lead to further marginalisation of non-Western cultural knowledge and values, while producing academic “elites” within the IAR community, meanwhile missing opportunities for innovation.

By opening the “black box” pertaining to translation gaps in the context of cross-language/cultural accounting research, the study calls for IAR scholars to help raise awareness of their role and identity as “cultural brokers”.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how accountability practices are affected and potentially transformed when mediated by translation. Adopting a postcolonial lens, the authors consider the ways in which translation functions and how intermediaries act as cultural translators in the context of microfinance.

The authors take a qualitative approach to a case study of a microfinance organization based in South Africa. Fieldwork allowed for the collection of data by means of direct observations, interviews, documents and a fieldwork diary.

The study demonstrates the presence of spaces of hybridity that co-exist within the same organizational context (Bhabha, 1994). Two spaces of hybridity are highlighted, in which translation processes were possible because of the proximity between borrowers and fieldworkers. The first space of hybridity was found locally and here translation shaped an accountability that aimed at leveraging local cultures and favoring cultural framing. The second space of hybridity was characterized by the interaction between oral and written cultures and the translation of responsibilities and expectations was predominantly unidirectional, prioritizing accountability practices consistent with organizational requirements.

This research offers in-depth insights into the links between intermediation, translation and accountability practices. It differs from prior research in considering intermediaries as active translators of accountability practices who act in-between cultures. The authors contend that the translation process reinscribes culture allowing dominant accountability practices to prevail and local cultural traditions to merely contextualize accountability practices.

This paper concerns the pivotal role that entrepreneurial universities can play in developing knowledge transfer and translation processes tailored to the cultural ecosystem.

The paper examines IncubiAmo Cultura, an innovative project that aims to mentor potential entrepreneurs and offer incubation and acceleration for cultural start-ups. The research methodology is based on action research and theory building from cases. An interventionist approach has been adopted, as one of the authors is also the founder of the ongoing project.

The in-depth collection of first-hand information on this pilot project has allowed the authors to formulate an analytical reflection and generate the design of a knowledge translation model driven by an entrepreneurial university that manifests itself through the creation of cultural and creative start-ups.

This article offers an original contribution to scholarship by offering a conceptual model for knowledge translation in cultural ecosystems. Common values (i.e. social, cultural, ethical and aesthetic ones) emerge as the basis on which to build open innovation and knowledge circulation.

For local policymakers, this study provides a clue to understand the need for both an integrated vision of knowledge translation and policies that aim to make an impact at the cultural ecosystem level. For entrepreneurial university governance, our investigation offers suggestions on the design and implementation of knowledge translation processes that fit with the specificity of the cultural ecosystem. For practitioners in the cultural field, a change of mindset is required to combine resources, energies and knowledge.

This work fills several gaps in the literature, as research generally concerns knowledge transfer from entrepreneurial universities to the market with regard to high-tech sectors. In contrast, the cultural sector is often neglected, despite its importance in the renewal and development of a territory.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how translation activities influence knowledge transfer across cultures in Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs). Although translation is recognized as a critical instrument for MNEs to enhance cross-national knowledge flow, scholars have not put much emphasis on the importance of translation in international business research.

This paper proposes a novel hierarchical framework to delineate the five major boundary-spanning functions regarding translation for knowledge transfer in China (i.e. exchanging, linking, manipulating, facilitating and intervening). Due to the paucity of relevant literature, the authors used exploratory case studies investigating two large Chinese MNEs to illustrate how individuals as boundary spanners handle the translation requirements associated with cross-cultural knowledge transmission within a MNE’s business network. The data coding approach was used to examine the assumed model.

The findings demonstrate that translators indeed play a vital role in cross-border knowledge exchanging, linking people with crucial knowledge, manipulating the flow of knowledge for protecting confidentiality, facilitating the cross-cultural interaction of various knowledge sources and intervening to prevent the occurrence of misunderstanding in MNE contexts. The authors also reveal how translators overcome the three constraints of language interpretation concerning knowledge transfer (i.e. lack of equivalence, cultural interference and ambiguity). The proposed research framework was fully supported.

The results provide insightful implications for MNEs to treat translation as a significant “re-codification” rather than a mundane task. Knowledge transfer within MNEs involves not only knowledge regarding products, technology and operations but also involves “whole organizations” including business models, organizational visions, missions and strategies.

The main value of this paper is to propose a novel model regarding the role of translation in cross-cultural knowledge transfer in China. Language is a container of contexts; the translation procedure in MNEs is actually dynamic and contingent in nature and can be seen as an act of knowledge creation per se.

The purpose of this paper is to increase the awareness of the implications of language translation for accounting standard setting, education and research, and to work towards a critical research agenda.

The paper is based on a selective review of recent intercultural accounting research and literature on translation in accounting, of developments in accounting standard setting and on selected insights from translation studies.

Translation is not a simple technical, but a socio-cultural, subjective and ideological process. In contrast to the translation turn in other disciplines, however, most qualitative and critical accounting research neglects translation as a methodological and epistemological consideration and as a research opportunity.

The paper proposes themes for a research agenda on translation in accounting.

The paper identifies opportunities for further and deeper investigations of translation in accounting regulation, education and research. Particular emphasis is given to the implication of translation in accounting research that is grounded in interpretivist and constructivist paradigms, where translation is inextricably linked with data analysis and interpretation and may inadvertently reproduce cultural hegemonies.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the challenges of translating qualitative data from Arabic to English within the field of gender and management studies.

This paper presents a real experience of translating qualitative data from Arabic to English within the management area in Saudi Arabia. Data were collected from interviewing female managers working in the Saudi public sector.

Translating qualitative data from Arabic to English is not a straightforward process. During the translation of this cross-cultural qualitative research, three challenges were faced: the embeddedness of the language meaning in the culture, positionality and its influence on data production and language differences. The study found that, in absence of a standard way for translating cross-linguistic qualitative research, a combination of methods is found to be useful to increase the validity and reliability of the study findings. Researchers who conduct qualitative insider research and who translate their own data are in a better position to do cross-language data analysis.

This paper contributes to the literature by showing that translating Arabic texts regarding gender, management and leadership is embedded within historical, cultural, political and institutional contexts, requiring a deep understanding of both language and culture to produce a depth of knowledge. Also, the novelty of this study is that it highlights the importance of being an insider qualitative researcher and translating the research data, as researcher offers significant opportunities for close attention to certain points in the text; and this could add value to the analysis as a way to establish validity of interpretations.

Focuses on the issue of survey translation and different translation alternatives available to researchers. As marketers attempt to better understand and serve the needs of the global consumer, they face a culturally diverse population. When conducting research with different cultural groups, it is necessary to utilize culturally and linguistically appropriate instruments to measure various concepts. Frequently, details of instrument development are very limited, or omitted from presentation of research results. An instrument that is not properly adapted can have serious ramifications for study conclusions. This study attempts to identify alternatives for survey translation (specifically with a Hispanic subgroup), and provides some empirical evidence as to the effectiveness of a combination of these methods.

This study aims to investigate the treatment of translation within the international business and management (IBM) literature to highlight colonialist assumptions inscribed in this treatment as a result of the hegemonic status of English.

This investigation takes the form of a systemic literature review to examine the treatment of translation in the IBM literature through a postcolonial lens.

The findings demonstrate that despite growing interest in language in international business, matters of translation have received comparatively little attention. However, those articles that do address translation matters tend to do so in five key ways, including epistemological/methodological considerations, exploring translator agency, the investigations of the discursive void/conceptual fuzziness between languages, and approaches that discuss translation as social practice.

Despite the authors’ critique of English-language hegemony, this literature review is restricted to English-language journals, which the authors acknowledge as problematic and discuss within the article.

In exposing the limited treatment of translation within the literature, the authors provide a call to action for IBM scholars to be more explicit in their treatment of translation to ensure representation of cultural and linguistic Others, rather than providing domesticated accounts of multilingual research.

Although there have been other articles that have examined translation in the past, this paper is the first to do so through a postcolonial lens, demonstrating from a linguistic perspective the colonialist assumptions that are still prevalent in IBM knowledge production, as evidenced by the treatment of translation in the field.

The purpose of this research is to expand cross‐cultural research and validate the Learning Transfer System Inventory in Ukraine. The researchers seek to translate the LTSI into Ukrainian and investigate the internal structure of this translated version of the questionnaire.

The LTSI is translated into Ukrainian using a rigorous translation methodology. The instrument was distributed to 511 (430 – usable data) individuals from various organizations throughout Ukraine. The exploratory factor analysis (common factor analysis with oblique rotation) was used to analyze the survey data.

The factor structure of the Ukrainian version of the LTSI (ULTSI) paralleled that of the original instrument. Most items loaded on appropriate factors with loadings over 0.4. Two factors (Opportunity to Use Learning and Performance‐Outcomes Expectations) did not emerge as clearly as in the original instrument and require further research.

The instrument was distributed to a convenience sample which limits the external validity of the study. Some translation issues may have possibly influenced low loadings for few items. The questionnaires distributed in the Eastern part of Ukraine were problematic because the population there is mostly Russian‐speaking while the instruments were in Ukrainian. The study provides evidence of construct validity of the LTSI in the Ukrainian business environment. With the limitations outlined above further research can address translation issues and language barrier problems. Some items may be included that will suit the Ukrainian environment better, which may resolve problems in two factors mentioned above. New methods of instrument translation could be utilized in future as well as alternative statistical analyses (Confirmatory Factor Analysis).

The ULTSI is now one of the first and few HRD tools in Ukraine. It can be used to assess the transfer climate in Ukrainian organizations in order to maximize the positive outcomes of the investment in training. As a diagnostic tool the ULTSI can provide necessary information about the environmental and organizational forces that are at play in a given organization, and it can help improve the results of training interventions.

This cross‐cultural study is one of the first efforts in existence to bridge the Ukrainian and Western cultures in terms of HRD. It provides a possibility for HRD methodology and theory to be introduced in Ukrainian businesses. At the same time, the study provides evidence of the construct validity and sound structure of the LTSI.