Glossary
Multilingual Research
Multilingual research means running interviews and groups in the languages participants actually use, then handling translation deliberately.
By Jitendra Kumar Nirala, Founder · Updated 23 Oct 2026
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What is multilingual research?
Multilingual research is research in which participants, researchers or materials use more than one language. For fieldwork, it means running interviews and groups in participants' own languages and handling translation deliberately.
Key takeaways
- Choose the language of each session before recruitment, per sample cell.
- Ask each participant which language they are most comfortable discussing in; never infer it from city, education or phone number.
- Every extra language cell multiplies groups and sessions, so decide which concepts truly need a separate cell.
- Keep the original-language wording next to the translation, and keep the source wording where the phrasing matters.
What multilingual research covers, and how it differs from bilingual research
Bilingual research involves two languages. The label multilingual also covers literature reviews across languages, analysis of multilingual text and cross-cultural comparison, but this page is about fieldwork: interviews, groups and tasks run in participants' own languages.
A sample cell is one group of participants recruited and analysed together, for example Tamil speakers in Chennai.
Two related terms recur. Code-switching is a participant moving between languages within a conversation, such as Hindi and English mixed in one sentence (often called Hinglish). Back-translation is translating a text into another language and then back to check it. It catches only some flaws, because a poor first translation can back-translate well, so the team approach, where a translator and an independent verifier discuss each line, is more reliable.
Why the language decision shapes a study in India
The language decision is made early and is expensive to reverse. Decide it after recruitment and you find that the discussion guide does not survive translation, that the moderator cannot follow a mid-sentence switch from Hindi to English, or that the transcript flattens the phrase your client cared about. A Hindi and English group in Delhi next to a Tamil group in Chennai need different guides, moderators and transcripts.
As of October 2026, the latest full count is Census 2011, which lists 121 languages: 22 Scheduled (constitutionally recognised) and 99 not. That figure depends on how mother tongues are grouped. The 19,569 raw returns were rationalised into 1,369 mother tongues, then regrouped into 270 mother tongues with more than 10,000 speakers each, plus the 121 languages.
The practical lesson is to name languages in the brief. "Regional languages" or "vernacular" is not a specification. Write the actual languages, by city and by cell, and treat dialect differences inside one language as a question for your moderator.
How a careful multilingual process runs
A careful process translates, verifies independently and pretests before fieldwork. A qualitative study is far smaller than a national survey, so the recommended approach is to keep that sequence and shrink the scale: translate the materials, have a second fluent reader check them, and run a pilot session, a trial run before full fieldwork, in every language. Pew's India survey used 17 languages, translated the questionnaire into 16 and had it independently verified by professional linguists.
Write your screener, the short questionnaire that decides who qualifies, with the language question first, so participants who cannot take part in the planned language are screened out early. Where participants live outside metros, rural market research adds its own scoping questions.
Multilingual research checks for your brief
Decide language, moderator and transcript together, per sample cell, before you recruit. Add these rows to your market research brief. Each is a test, and failing any one means you fix it before fieldwork. The second row carries the largest cost: every separate language cell adds its own groups.
- Decision
- Session language
- Pass if
- Every participant has stated the language they are most comfortable discussing in. None is inferred from city, education or phone number.
- Decision
- Separate language cell
- Pass if
- You have asked, concept by concept, whether a translated concept, local vocabulary, cultural reference or buyer journey could change interpretation. Yes means a separate cell.
- Decision
- Moderator and note-taker
- Pass if
- Both understand the language participants actually use. A moderator who needs help following the discussion fails.
- Decision
- Materials
- Pass if
- Screener, invitation, discussion guide, and any concepts, ads, prototypes, packaging or scripts are all localised before fieldwork.
- Decision
- Pilot
- Pass if
- At least one pilot session ran in each language, and the guide was edited from it.
- Decision
- Transcript
- Pass if
- Original wording is kept beside the translation, and every quote in the report traces to its source.
- Decision
- Code-switching
- Pass if
- The guide lets participants switch languages, and the transcript records the switch.
How Qualfacto handles it
Qualfacto runs sessions in languages other than English for buyers across India. The languages and cities are confirmed per brief. It recruits by city, targets by household and demographic profile, and checks participant identity before invitation. It can supply moderators, and depending on scope provides recordings and transcripts. Participants join with informed consent, covered in its guide to informed consent in research.
Buyers send the languages, cities and cells in their brief. Qualfacto reviews it for feasibility and returns a tailored proposal and quote, because pricing is set project by project. It also offers a free pilot, which is a practical way to test one language cell before committing to all of them.
Briefs can be emailed to the team or sent on WhatsApp. Qualfacto aims to reply within one business day, Monday to Friday, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM Indian Standard Time (IST), though detailed briefs may take longer.
Example
Take one participant category, 3 to 4 groups per language cell, and three cities that each use a different language. That needs 3 languages × 3 to 4 groups, so 9 to 12 groups, against 3 to 4 for one shared language. This is an illustration, not a quote, but it is why the language list belongs in the brief and not in the fieldwork phase.
Frequently asked
Sources
- 1.The India Forum, "What the Census obscures"
- 2.Pew Research Center, "Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation", Pew Research Center, 2021-06-29
- 3.Pew Research Center, "How we translate survey questions to be fielded around the world", Pew Research Center, 2022-04-22