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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 primary objective of this research paper was to examine the objectivity of the preselected items evaluation (PIE) method, a prevalent translation scoring method deployed by international institutions such as UAntwerpen, UGent and the University of Granada.

This research critically analyzed the scientific and theoretical bottlenecks associated with the PIE method, specifically focusing on its parameters, namely the p-value and d-index, in adherence to established statistical protocols. Proposed remedies to mitigate the identified bottlenecks and augment the efficacy of the method were grounded in practicality.

The paper provided an extensive overview of the PIE method, which served as the foundation for the subsequent analysis and discussions. This research presented potential avenues for refinement and contributed to the current debate on objective translation assessment by addressing the theoretical and practical challenges associated with the PIE method.

Translation researchers, practitioners and international institutions seeking to enhance the accuracy and reliability of translation evaluation should consider the implications of this research’s findings.

Although several publications focused on the role of the PIE method in translation evaluation, no study(ies) is available to critically analyze the scientific and theoretical bottlenecks of this translation evaluation method.

This chapter approaches the topic of teaching the Western scholarly tradition in non-Western countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from three perspectives employing the following metaphors: as a Public Servant motivated by public service to the goals and aims of the country’s development articulated by UAE rulers and its citizens; as Cultural Diplomat, representing the Western tradition and its scholarly achievements while respecting other traditions; and as Intellectual Imperialist, aiming at a colonising incorporation of the UAE into the Western academic world.

The main methodology adopted is the Weberian ideal type, located within a comparative and historical context that produces the metaphors as analytically possible perspectives as a western expatriate faculty member. Additional critique is drawn from Bourdieu, Said, Freire, Giroux, Foucault, Goffman and cross-cultural organisation studies.

The findings consist of an analytic framework consisting of public servant, cultural diplomat and intellectual imperialist as a set of conceptions for analysing possible orientations of Western expatriate academics in developing countries.

The implications are threefold: on a personal level, what experientially does each of the metaphors mean for one’s sense of identity, profession, values and relationships; on a pedagogical level, what principles and values distinguish the curriculum and teaching styles as well as orientation to Arab and Islamic scholarship; and politically, what is the potential impact and unintended consequences for the indigenous culture, sovereignty and societal survival of a country under the heavy influence of globalisation. The contention of this chapter is that one cannot avoid adopting one or more of these roles and may even perform in contradictory ways.

The originality is in establishing a new set of analytic categories drawing on post-colonial, diplomacy and critical studies.

Continued research on the assessment and development of emotional and social intelligence competencies represents an opportunity to further both theoretical and applied applications of behavioral science to the management of human capital. While the field has continued to expand over the preceding decades, research has often trailed application, especially as it relates to cross‐cultural validity. The purpose of this introductory essay to this special issue of CCM serves to focus on cultural issues related to applied use of competencies in diverse cultures.

Emotional and social intelligence competencies are defined and an overview provided for the papers that will follow, with original research linking these constructs to performance in various occupations and cultures, as well as issues related to their development.

Emotional and social intelligence competencies are found to represent a practical and theoretically coherent, reliable and valid approach to assessing and developing individuals in diverse cultures.

As an introductory essay, the paper lays the foundation for the following articles in this special issue.

Although competencies are in widespread use around the world, issues related to cross‐cultural validation are seldom studied empirically. This introductory essay and subsequent articles will help clarify emotional and social competencies as a behavioral approach to applying emotional intelligence to the practical needs of organizations.

A recent study showed that the 2000 PISA results have had an influence on policy reform in the majority of participating countries/economies (Breakspear, 2012). This was not the case in France by far, a country where PISA methodology was under strong criticism at the time the PISA 2000 results were released. However, improvements came progressively: first, national curriculum standards were introduced a few years later that aimed at drastically changing the educational goals in France. Second, an evaluation based on PISA’s methodology was introduced for eighth graders. Third, at the time of the third and subsequent PISA surveys, the validity of PISA as a tool was recognized. Finally, the policy impact of PISA reached its highest level at the time of the fifth survey in 2012. Yet, many teachers and school principals do not know much about PISA. This chapter seeks to analyze the reasons why it took France so long to fully recognize the value of PISA.

To promote more open discussion on translating data, this paper aims to provide a critical and reflexive evaluation of the problems and issues that the author experienced with regard to qualitative data translation.

Drawing on personal experiences of translating Chinese women's narratives into English, the author demonstrates that qualitative data translation may have linguistic, cultural and methodological problems.

Researchers and translators should recognize the linguistic and cultural differences that data translation must negotiate. It is argued here that researchers and translators should preserve and highlight cultural differences rather than resembling the dominant values of the target culture by translation. A translator is an integral part of the knowledge producing system. The roles of the translator as both an inter‐cultural communicator and a data interpreter must be acknowledged in the research process.

This paper challenges common assumptions that data translation is merely a technical problem, and that a translator could “objectively and faithfully” transfer meanings of research data from source language to target language.

Issues of language in international business have been the focus of a growing body of theoretical and empirical work. This paper aims to contribute to this literature, focusing specifically on issues of translation. The role of translator will vary depending on the language strategy adopted, with strategies linked to differing perspectives on language in international business – mechanical, cultural and political. The paper examines these perspectives through the lens of a specific problem for transnational communication – “untranslatable” words and concepts.

Interviews were conducted with professional linguists (translators and interpreters) to explore how they dealt with issues of untranslatable but cultural salient words in their day‐to‐day work with international businesses, using the problems of translating the Farsi word tarouf into English as a case in point.

The linguists agreed that tarouf was an untranslatable word, and described their strategies to deal with this problem. The commonest strategy was avoidance, stemming from linguists' concern to maintain their professional standing with clients, a finding which reflects an emerging emphasis on the importance of context and relationships for understanding inter‐cultural communication.

The study highlights the crucial role of the translator in international business, and draws attention to the potential for cross‐cultural communication problems arising from mutual lack of awareness of culturally‐salient but inherently untranslatable words or phrases.

Effective inter‐cultural communication is an issue of great importance to wider society, and business has historically been the commonest site of such communication. The study highlights an issue of considerable importance for improving inter‐cultural communications, contributing to a growing inter‐disciplinary literature in this area.

Much of the research on language in international business has focused on the emergence of English as a lingua franca, but the present study focuses on specific issues of translation and does so in an under‐researched location, Iran. It draws attention to a problem of translation not widely discussed, and shows how important this issue can be for international business.

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 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.