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Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 10:1 (2020) ► pp.35–57

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Processing backward translation at intermediate L2 proficiency

The role of lexical, conceptual, and phonological links

 | University of Freiburg
Published online: 22 February 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.17018.raf
Abstract
This study opens a window into the mapping of the lexical structure of bilinguals as they reach intermediate-level L2 proficiency. A group of 32 Persian-speaking English learners participated in a translation recognition task, where they had to decide whether the sequentially presented English-Persian word pairs were translation equivalents. The Persian words in the experimental trials were not translation equivalents, but they either shared lexical or semantic features with the correct translations or shared phonological features with the preceding English words. For example, the Persian word /bɒːzuː/ in the word pair arm – /bɒːzuː/ was manipulated to create three categories of ‘no’ trials: (a) orthographically related to the translation equivalent (arm – /bɒːziː/ ‘game’), (b) semantically related to the translation equivalent (arm – /ʃɒːne/ ‘shoulder’), (c) phonologically related to the English word (arm – /ɒːrmɒːn/ ‘goal’). A significant interference effect was observed in response to the items in the first two categories, which indicates extensive utilization of both lexical and conceptual links in backward translation. However, the observed interference effect in the third category did not reach statistical significance, which calls into question the integrated activation of L1 and L2 prior to high level L2 proficiency. These results are discussed within the context of the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33(2), 149–174. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) and the Bilingual Interactive Activation Plus model ( (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5(3), 175–197. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Literature review
    • 2.1The Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM)
    • 2.2The BIA+ model
  • 3.Current study
    • 3.1Method
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Materials
      • 3.1.3Design
      • 3.1.4Procedure
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Orthographically related category
    • 4.2Semantically related category
    • 4.3Phonologically related category
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Trial type and L2 proficiency
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (40)
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