Q:

Leave quotations in original (bad) English or edit?

I am editing a thesis and the writer has quoted from many interviews with non-native English speakers. I'm wondering whether it is correct practice to leave the quotations as is, or perhaps use (sic), or to edit them in correct English? Thanks in advance.

A:

In qualitative social research, two main methods of transcription are applied: naturalized transcription and denaturalized transcription.

Naturalized transcription is a detailed and less filtered transcription. It is as detailed as possible and focuses on the details of the discourse, such as breaks in speech, laughter, mumbling, involuntary sounds, gestures, body language, etc. as well as content [...] Denaturalized transcription is flowing, presenting ‘laundered’ data which removes the slightest socio-cultural characteristics of the data or even information that could shed light on the results of the study. It accurately describes the discourse, but limits dealing with the description of accent or involuntary sounds (Mero-Jaffe 2011, 232, emphasis added).

To what extent interview transcriptions ("quotations") can be altered is a methodological choice, which must be informed by the purpose of the study, and which is sometimes controlled by explicit transcription rules. It should therefore be left to the author, not to the editor.
As editor, I would leave all quotations as they are, and point this out to the author.

Mero-Jaffe, I. (2011). ‘Is that what I Said?’ Interview Transcript Approval by Participants: An Aspect of Ethics in Qualitative Research. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 231–247. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691101000304

