European Working Conditions Survey 2024: Translation report

Highquality translations are essential for Eurofound surveys to ensure that every respondent understands questions in the same way, regardless of language or cultural context. Accurate translation preserves semantic and conceptual equivalence, enabling valid crosscountry comparisons. It prevents measurement error, reduces bias and supports reliable weighting, coding and analysis. Clear, consistent translations also improve respondent engagement, leading to higher data quality and more robust labour market insights.

Extensive preparation was required to deliver a harmonised cross-national survey in the 35 countries and 49 language versions and this included developing a clear English source questionnaire, a glossary and translation notes, and integrating findings from advance translations, cognitive testing and 3MC review.

To ensure high quality questionnaires for each country, the EWCS 2024 applied the TRAPD(opens in new tab)This link opens in a new tab methodology-Translation, Review, Adjudication, Pre-test and Documentation - which is the gold standard for translation. Two independent translators and an adjudicator worked on each of the 37 full-translation languages, while 11 languages underwent adaptation from a base version; harmonisation was applied with the shared-language groups to maintain comparability while respecting local variants.

The translation workload was substantial, involving a large number of linguists. The process required multiple rounds of review, meetings, proofreading and updates following the pilot test as well as quality checks and documentation.

Beyond the main questionnaire and screener, extensive fieldwork materials-showcards, letters, manuals, invitations and scripts-were translated or adapted. The report highlights the central role of rigorous linguistic procedures in ensuring valid, comparable and high-quality data collection when carrying out multi-cultural, multi-lingual and multi-national (3MC) surveys.