Translating difference: questions of representation in cross-cultural research encounters

This paper addresses questions of cross-cultural communication and represen tation as they arose in a longitudinal research project which sought to learn about the lives and concerns of older women. It focuses on the translations and mistranslations that occurred in narrative workshops where Australian researchers, who did not speak Vietnamese, worked with Australian Vietnamese women aged 55-74 and a translator to produce video diaries of the older women's everyday life. A number of workshop interactions around storytelling are examined to document the complexities that can arise when communities meet and interact across cultures. The aim is to 'come clean' about the problems of trying to conduct research without a common language and to suggest just how difficult translations and representations of culture really are and how easily preconceptions and cultural positionings interfere with the process of communication that is actually occurring.