Source text influence on target-likeness of translated motion event expressions: Bilingual processing in translation of Chinese-English and Chinese-French learners

This study investigates how source-text structures, target-language (TL) structural flexibility, and learner proficiency interact to shape the target-likeness of bilingual translations. Drawing on translations of voluntary and caused motion event expressions from Chinese into English and French, we examine how source-language influence varies across types of motion, TLs, and proficiency levels. Findings reveal that source-text influence is stronger when the TL allows multiple structural realizations, something that is particularly visible in caused motion events, supporting a serial lexical co-activation account over structural priming. While higher proficiency enables access to TL-congruent structures, it does not uniformly reduce source-language influence. These results have implications for translator education and L2 pedagogy. However, further classroom-based research is needed to validate these pedagogical applications, particularly in contexts involving learners without formal training in translation.