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Examining English–German translation ambiguity using primed translation recognition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

CHARLES M. EDDINGTON  and
NATASHA TOKOWICZ
CHARLES M. EDDINGTON
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
NATASHA TOKOWICZ*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
*
Address for correspondence: Natasha Tokowicz, Learning Research & Development Center, 3939 O'Hara St., Room 634, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USAtokowicz@pitt.edu
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Abstract

Many words have more than one translation across languages. Such translation-ambiguous words are translated more slowly and less accurately than their unambiguous counterparts. We examine the extent to which word context and translation dominance influence the processing of translation-ambiguous words. We further examine how these factors influence translation ambiguity stemming from two sources, specifically translation ambiguity derived from semantic ambiguity and from near-synonymy. Bilingual participants were presented with English–German word pairs that were preceded by a related or unrelated prime and were asked to decide if the word pairs were translations. Translation-unambiguous pairs were recognized more quickly and accurately than translation-ambiguous pairs. Related pairs and dominant translations were responded to more quickly than unrelated pairs and subordinate translations, respectively. We discuss the results in relation to models of bilingual memory and propose a new model that makes specific predictions about translation ambiguity, the Revised Hierarchical Model of Translation Ambiguity.

Keywords

translation ambiguityprimed translation recognitiontranslation dominancesemantic similarity

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Special Issue 2: Computational Modeling of Bilingualism , April 2013 , pp. 442 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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Footnotes

†

Article updated on 3 January 2026.

*

We thank the members of the PLUM Lab, and especially Kaitlin Mainwaring and Kelly Griffin for research assistance, and Charles A. Perfetti and Tessa Warren for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This manuscript was also improved by the comments of Mark Brysbaert and two anonymous reviewers. We also thank Carrie Jackson for her valuable assistance with this study. NT was supported by PSI2009–12616 “Procesamiento Léxico y Sintáctico en la Adquisición de Segundas Lenguas” awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science during the writing of this manuscript.

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