Begin 2004 heeft de SDSP, in het kader van een projectopdracht aan een student van de Hogeschool InHolland in Diemen, onderzoek laten uitvoeren naar interculturele communicatie. Dit onderzoek is gerelateerd aan een van de projecten van de SDSP.

De conclusies zijn onder meer:

• In intercultural communication situations, it is natural for SDSP and partner organisations to be aware of the potential for various misunderstandings and to want to avoid them. The cultural differences between the Dutch and Indonesia's NGO can lead to a noise limiting the effectiveness of the communication

• Linguists have studied the relationship between language and culture, and it is described in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This theory says that cultural elements can be seen in the vocabulary and grammar of a language. If the language makes it easy to express such things or ideas, they must be important to the culture.

• Unique aspects of cultures are reflected in the languages spoken by their populations. Language can become a barrier in communication when these unique aspects interfere with translation. Five elements that typically cause problems in translation are the lack of equivalences in vocabulary, idioms, grammar and syntax, experiences and concepts. One way to avoid translation problems is to 'back translate', which is to first translate the concept into one language and then translate it back into original language.

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