Lisa Evans
Mind your language:
Language change and translation
Lisa Evans
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Background – why language?
•  Business/commerce (and all human interaction) require
communication
•  Accounting is a means of communication – it uses numbers
AND words
• 
… not merely a neutral technical practice, but often serves
more to legitimise behaviour (of individuals or organisations)
than to aid decision making (Power, 2003).
•  … is socially constructed (e.g. Tinker, 1985)
•  Rhetoric, persuasion, lobbying, legitimising – in regulation,
policy making, communication with stakeholders
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For example …
•  Young’s (2003) close examination of the text of selected
FASB standards shows the standard setter’s rhetorical
efforts to construct a standard as good and the FASB as
a good standard setter and attempt to ‘maintain the myth
of accounting objectivity’ (p. 621), while silencing
alternatives and criticisms.
•  Nørreklit’s (2003) rhetorical analysis of the Balanced
Scorecard: is the BSC the result of a new and convincing
theory or of persuasive rhetoric?
•  Erb and Pelger (2015) critically investigate the
replacement of ‘reliability’, in the IASB’s Conceptual
Framework, with ‘representational faithfulness’
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Language Change
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Language change
•  The meaning of words changes over time
•  Words have to be ‘understood in their historical
context’ (Mills, 1989:22).
•  ‘The key words of the vocabulary of history should only
be used after asking a number of questions. Where do
they come from? How have the come to us? Are they
likely to mislead us?’ (Mills, 1989:21 citing Braudel,
1979:232).
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Language change
Exploring language change can
contribute to a better understanding of (accounting) history (cf. Mills,
1989) and the wider genealogy of calculative practices, which
‘put[s] much more emphasis than do traditional approaches [to
accounting history] on the contemporaneous existence of a
particular language or vocabulary, and how this enables particular
calculative technologies to be endowed with definite meanings and
deployed for specific ends’ (Miller and Napier, 1993: 639)
contribute another perspective to ‘the crafting of multiple histories from
multiple perspectives via multiple methodologies’ encouraged by
Parker (1999: 29).
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Motivations & mechanisms
Motivations for and mechanisms of language change in
commerce and accounting can tell us much about
•  societal and cultural contexts of change (contact with
other cultures, motivations and politics of occupational
groups)
•  socio-economic, political or ideological processes
•  power relationships
•  the transfer/dissemination of technical change
•  jurisdictional disputes
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Mechanisms
Three main ways of finding a word to express a
(new) concept
•  semantic change/shift, where an existing word
is applied to a new concept; i.e. it changes
meaning or adopts additional meanings
•  loanwords or borrowing from another language
•  word formation/new coinages/‘neologisms’, i.e.
‘creating a new word with the material offered
by the speaker’s language’ (Grzega, 2003:22)
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Mechanisms: semantic shift
•  Mills (1989) traces the changing meaning and
connotations of French le compte.
•  This shift suggests:
•  ‘that the idea of the account, and thus of
accountability or responsibility, was changing,
becoming more closely associated with concepts
of enumeration and losing, as a result, the
pervasive sense of legality and stewardship that
had characterised it earlier’ (Mills, 1989:30)
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The Semantic Field
of Economics
(Source: Crystal,
2003:137)
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Mechanisms: loanwords
•  (incl. new coinages based on foreign components)
•  Common where concepts are imported from foreign
language areas
•  Examples: words of Italian origin in accounting and
banking
→ results in shift in meaning
•  Also occurs when using ‘loanwords’ from everyday
language or from other disciplines:
–  reserve, prudence, realisation from everyday language
–  asset from law
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Mechanisms: neologisms
(including compounding)
Example: the increasing division of labour among
French accountants in the second half of the 19th
century resulted in the combination of adjectives
with the term comptabilité, to create terms such as
comptabilité agricole, comptabilité industrielle,
comptabilité commerciale, comptabilité générale
and comptabilité auxiliare (Labardin and Nikitin,
2009)
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Motivations: the need to verbalise new
concepts
As a result of external social changes or technical developments:
North Italian banking, international implementation of TFV, the change
from ‘true and correct’ to TFV, the change from ‘balance sheet’ to
‘statement of financial position’(?)
‘… we note that the IASB proposes to change the titles of statements
that have several hundred years of history and, therefore, a high
degree of common understanding, such as the balance sheet, which
the IASB proposes to rename to ‘statement of financial position’, or at
least decades such as the cash flow statement, which the IASB
proposes to rename to ‘statement of cash flows’’ (European Accounting
Association’s Financial Reporting Standards Committee, 2006)
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Motivations: socio-cultural change and
occupational interest groups
For example:
•  the development of an occupational group
•  the extension of its jurisdictions
‘People often have to work to establish their own identity
categories, to name their particular social group, and to stake
their claim in owning their representations of themselves’
(Thornborrow, 1999:142)
This can be done through the use of a specific register by its
speakers: ‘… speakers’ choice of linguistic code, or variety, plays
an important role in establishing their group identity’ (ibid.)
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Motivations: socio-cultural change and
occupational interest groups
•  accountant – bookkeeper, clerk (Parker, 1994)
•  comptabilité - tenue des livres (book-keeping) (Labardin and Nikitin,
2009)
•  cost accounting - management accounting (Miller and Napier, 1993)
Language registers (LSPs) can serve to
•  demarcate group identity and belonging to a special elite
•  exclude other individuals
•  instil the speaker with the social capital of belonging to a special
group and having special skills
•  enhance prestige
Increasing use of English as ‘lingua franca’, use of English terminology.
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Motivations: other vested interests
•  Language as a tool of legitimisation and control in the context
of Australian Public Sector reforms: changing definitions and
interpretations of the terms ‘accrual accounting’ and ‘asset’
were employed to drive accounting change and allowed the
accounting profession to extend its jurisdiction (Potter, 1999)
•  Ideologies: Linguistic Purism
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Methods – Mills (1989)
Sources:
•  accounting records and literature
•  ‘dictionaries, encylopaedias and other kinds of
wordbooks’ (p.23)
Advantages:
•  entries are separable and self-contained
•  ‘catalogue of received ideas’ (Mills,1989:23, with
reference to McArthur, 1986:102)
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Methods – Mills (1989)
Guidelines for analysis (from Mills, 1989:25):
•  What are the specific circumstances of the writer and his/
her intended audience? In what context is his/her work
and its individual components to be understood (Alonso,
1980:233)?
•  What is the general sense of the word?
•  Are there repeated patterns in the use or definition of the
subject-word?
•  Are there any alterations in a standard patterns
previously detected (Trenard, 1972:430)?
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Methods – Mills (1989)
•  Is the word used or defined in terms of concepts drawn
from other fields?
•  If there is more then one usage, do the alternative
meanings of the word suggest connections or relations to
contextual factors? Are there identifiable phases in the
history of the word and, if so, what are they?
•  Does the word have close modern equivalents or does it
represent an intellectual composite that makes it difficult
to translate into a modern language (Eckard, 1984:456-9)
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Methods – Mills (1989)
Researcher
•  ‘documents the patterns of ideas and events, the
prevailing concepts, attitudes and other
significant representations that permit the
historian to construct a narrative account’ (Mills,
1989:24)
•  examines the external context of the text AND
•  each identifiable component
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Methods – Additional Thoughts
Explore also
•  the origins of words
•  conditions/motivations for language change
•  mechanisms for innovation (e.g. why borrowings?)
•  transmissions/diffusion across languages and
cultures (where does the word come from?)
•  contact with other (accounting) cultures
•  societal and cultural contexts of change
•  the socio-economic and political factors that affect
adoption of new concepts and terminology
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Methods – additional thoughts
•  Recent innovations in methods in historical
semantics
•  Electronic (full-text) resources
•  Oxford English Dictionary Online
•  Early English books on-line
•  Eighteenth Century Collections online
•  Quantitative corpus based/statistical methods to
test hypotheses about semantic change
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Translation
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Measuring perception/meaning
Even within the same language, accounting concepts are
perceived or interpreted differently by different groups,
such as
•  academics
•  users of accounting information
•  preparers
•  accounting students
•  members of different cultural groups
Use of semantic differential techniques, etc.
(see e.g. Haried, 1972 and 1973; Oliver, 1974; Belkaoui, 1980;
Houghton, 1987; Adelberg and Farelly, 1989; Riahi-Belkaoui and
Picur, 1991 and Bagranoff et al., 1994, etc.).
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Translation
•  High quality translation is essential for company law harmonisation
and because of the political dimensions and economic consequences
of international commerce and trade.
•  Multinational enterprises engage in international transactions, raise
capital in foreign markets, incorporate foreign subsidiaries into
consolidated financial statements, and employ and train staff from
diverse, international backgrounds.
•  Accounting researchers analyse texts, conduct interviews or
experiments in languages other than English, but publish findings in
English
•  Accounting education is delivered, in English, to non-native speakers;
teaching material, including textbooks are translated from English into
other languages
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Translation
•  Problems of different interpretations are
exacerbated when (accounting) practices and
terminology are transferred or translated into
another culture and language.
•  This is because translation is not straightforward:
the signifier (the sound pattern or word) and the
signified (the underlying concept) are not
equivalent in different languages and cultures
(Saussure, 1915).
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Sapir (1929/49)
‘Human beings do not live in the objective world alone nor
alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood,
but are very much at the mercy of the particular language
which has become the medium of expression for their
society. … The real world is to a large extent
unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group.
No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be
considered as representatives of the same social reality.
The worlds in which different societies live are distinct
worlds, not merely the same world with different labels
attached’ (p.162, emphasis added)
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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
‘… while nature is continuous, human beings cut
nature into discrete categories and each culture does
this cutting somewhat differently. People make up
words or concepts in order to talk about their world or
a cultural universe’ (Werner, 1994, p. 3656).
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Translation
English
Italian
{
nipote
nephew
niece
grandchild
grandson
granddaughter
Source: adapted from Eco (2003)
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Overlapping colour
terminology in
French and Welsh
(Source: Hjelmslev (1966:77)
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Non-equivalent accounting terms
(Source: based on text in Alexander and Nobes, 2013, p.202 )
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Example: True and Fair View
•  Approximate meaning: represented in accordance with
(economic) reality
•  No legal definition
•  Requirement for the presentation of financial statements and
for auditing
•  Overrides legal requirements (i.e. can be used as a
justification to depart from legal provisions)
•  Is related to (but not entirely equivalent) to the US concept of
‘fair presentation’ and the International (IFRS Foundation)
concept of ‘representational faithfulness’
•  Originated in the UK and has been implemented in EU
member states in the course of the EU’s company law
harmonisation programme.
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Emile Wolf is a well-known
accounting educator and
author of accounting
textbooks.
https://
www.accountancylive.com/woolftranslation-issues-accountingterminology
The official
French
translation
of TFV is
‘image fidèle’
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Source: Aisbitt and
Nobes (2001)
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Problems for translation
‘if one takes a concept embedded in the accounting
traditions in one country but that has never been known
or applied in another, even if it is translated as
accurately as practicable into the language of the second
country, the concept may not be understood. The
words may be understood, but the concept may not be
understood. The same may be so, at least for a time, for
elements of IFRS, which represent new concepts, or which
address problems that have rarely if ever occurred in many
national cultures even though the words are being
translated into their national language’ (Zeff, 2007, p. 296,
emphasis added)
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Example: uncertainty expressions
•  Expressions such as probably’, likely’, remote
•  The English terms (in Canadian accounting and
auditing standards) allow a more precise
interpretation than the French (Davidson & Chrisman
1993; 1994)
•  Cultural differences may lead to a lack of equivalent
interpretation of uncertainty expressions and thereby
to differences in the application of International
Accounting Standards (Doupnik and Richter, 2003,
2004; Doupnik and Riccio, 2006).
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Accounting textbooks
Problems encountered by authors/translators:
•  Specific features of languages (syntax; terminology; different ways of
expressing uncertainty)
•  Ambiguity: do certain phrases relate to obligatory instructions, options, or
illustrative purposes?
•  ‘Faux amis’
•  Inconsistencies in use of terminology across IFRSs and IASs and the
mix of US and UK accounting terminology
•  The sheer volume of consistent vocabulary required
•  Cultural, legal and institutional differences: accounting concepts in any
language are part of that language community’s accounting culture
⇒ Where a concept does not form part of a culture, its translation is not
meaningful, no matter what words are chosen.
⇒  Exact equivalence cannot be achieved in translation.
(Baskerville and Evans, 2011)
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Problem: untranslatable terms?
•  Some concepts are culture-specific to such an
extent that there is no similar concept in other
cultures.
•  These concepts can include institutions, terms
for behaviour, man-made objects, etc..
•  The only way a translator can get close to
conveying their meaning in another language is
by explaining or describing them, using a
number of words or phrases (circumlocution).
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If there is no (exact) equivalence in
translation …
… then this may lead to the use of the
(perceived) nearest equivalent
⇒ blurring of meaning or loss of significant
differences in the concepts.
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Examples
German ‘freier Beruf’ ≠ profession
German ‘Wirtschaftsprüfer’ ≠ Chartered Accountant
German ‘Grundsätze ordnungsmäβiger
Buchführung’ (GoB) ≠ Generally Accepted
Accounting Principles (GAAP)
Swedish ‘intäkt’ ≠ income
French ‘prudence’ ≠ prudence
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Implications:
•  ‘Since every language is ultimately sui generis - its categories being
defined in terms of relations holding within the language itself - it is
clear that formal correspondence is nearly always
approximate’ (Catford, 1965, p. 27);
•  There are no ‘mathematics-based concepts of semantic equivalence
or one-to-one correspondence’ (Venuti, 1995, p. 18).
•  ‘Language may not determine the way we think, but it does influence
the way we perceive and remember, and it affects the ease with
which we perform mental tasks’ (Crystal, 1987, p.15).
•  ‘… people certainly find it easier to make a conceptual distinction if it
neatly corresponds to words available in their language’ (ibid.)
•  Translation is an exchange between different mindsets (Ho, 2004)
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Accounting (and Law)
•  In addition, accounting (and law) are inherently
vague:
•  Legal theory, language theory and translation theory
are all ‘fundamentally indeterminate’
•  … and ‘ideological in nature … guided by political
positions and beliefs’ (Joseph, 1995:14)
•  Ambiguity arises from
–  the inherent flexibility of accounting (its foundation in different
disciplines)
–  the different degrees of indeterminacy of the registers of
these disciplines
–  the process or translation
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Vested interests
•  This is vulnerable to exploitation because of
–  the translator’s cognitive, cultural or ideological bias
–  vested interests
•  Intentional/conscious and unintentional mistranslation
can lead to unintended consequences
•  Different interpretations of the same source text may
lead to/explain disagreement on points of policy and
practice
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Other implications (research agendas)
•  Political and social implications
•  Translation does not explicitly affect the culturally and
economically most powerful players, but disadvantages
and disenfranchises less powerful stakeholders, inter alia
because the lack of high quality, timely translations can
–  delay implementation,
–  exclude stakeholders from the IFRS consultation and
implementation discourse
–  place undue and disproportionate costs on smaller jurisdictions,
and
–  allow the most powerful players to control the dissemination of
accounting thought.
•  Values relevant to large capital markets in developed
western economies are assumed to have global relevance
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Other implications (research agendas)
•  Two versions of IFRS translations for many languages
(EU version and IFRS Foundation version) - in spite of
IASB policy
•  Translation errors
•  Translation of rules v. principles
•  Exploitation of inherent ambiguity in translation, because
of
–  the translator’s cognitive, cultural or ideological bias
–  vested interests
•  Language/terminology change and ideological shifts
(globalisation, ‘imperialism’?)
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(Other) methods for exploring
translation
• 
• 
• 
• 
Survey evidence
Interviews
Exploring translation processes
Exploring texts/terminology
–  Annual Reports in Translation
–  IFRS/Accounting Regulation
•  Experiments
–  Testing understanding/readability
–  Translation – Back-translation
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The language factor in qualitative
accounting research
Quantitative
Qualitative
Methods
Accounting research is
becoming increasingly
interdisciplinary,
interacting with
economics, finance,
law, sociology, politics
Mainstream
(e.g. capital
markets
research)
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Xian (2008) notes that in (qualitative)
management research …
•  Translating data is rarely discussed by researchers
•  It is assumed that ‘cultural elements can be carried
across unchanged in the translation process’
•  Positivist thinking assumes an objective reality which can be obtained by translation
•  … and that the translator’s role is a purely technical,
objective one; the translator is invisible
•  Where translation is seen as a problem, it is
assumed that this can be addressed through a
scientific translation process
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Xian (2008) notes that in (qualitative)
management research …
•  However, in the translation of qualitative data, ‘The
translation process constitutes a (re)construction of the
social reality of a culture in a different language, in which
the translator interacts with the data, actively interpreting
social concepts and meanings’ (Xian, 2008: 233)
•  There is a fine line between translating and interpreting
data
•  Two translators may have a different interpretation of the
same text
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In conclusion, similar observations
appear to hold for accounting:
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
Studies published in English but conducted in a non-English speaking
country (and language) are often silent on translation.
This also appears to apply to studies that draw on data from diverse
language-cultures.
Interview, experimental and survey research with non-English speaking
participants appears to be often conducted in English, on the assumption
that language is not a significant barrier.
Where researchers translate research instruments and findings, this is also
often not discussed.
Further, research published in English may be grounded in theoretical
frameworks originally published in French or German.
Researchers rarely access these texts in the original, nor do they explore
the implications of working with translations.
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