Muslim Life in Germany - Deutsche Islam Konferenz

44 Introduction
The questions within the project “Muslim Life in Germany”
have been designed so that the dimension to be measured
is unambiguous and at the same time the question can be
translated to different languages and cultural contexts. For the
project “Muslim Life in Germany” a sequential procedure was
also chosen and a master questionnaire was developed in German.
This general sequential procedure was supplemented by
one element of parallel questionnaire development, as a Turkish
translation of the survey was tested at the same time as the
German version. This procedure enabled a prompt assessment
of the linguistic, conceptual and content suitability of the German
master version for translation which would otherwise only
become evident at a later point in time if a purely sequential approach
were chosen (Harkness et al. 2003: 31). It was only after
this that the questionnaires were translated into the seven other
target languages in line with the sequential method. 17 For the
language-based adaptation of the target questionnaires carried
out here only the structural differences between the various
languages were considered. 18
The most reliable and comprehensive results are achieved
with team-based translation processes where the skills and
interdisciplinary expertise of all team members are utilised (cf.
Harkness 2003: 36) while at the same time a differentiated assessment
of different translation versions is also possible. Within
team-based processes a distinction can be made between
the committee approach and the expert approach. With the
17 Albanian, Arabic, English, French, Persian, Russian and Serbian
18 Language-based adaptation should be regarded separately from terminological
and factual adaptation. There is also convention-based adaptation, which first
and foremost adapts the layout of questionnaires to cultural norms, and finally
culture-based adaptation because different norms, customs and practices exist
in the reference and in the target culture (cf. Harkness et al. 2003: 27).