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Translation Ambiguity

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Bilingual Lexical Ambiguity Resolution - edited by Roberto R. Heredia January 2020
... However, not all researchers are necessarily proficient in the languages of investigation (e.g., non-native Malay speakers conducting research in Malay). Furthermore, challenges in identifying translation equivalents are complicated by many words that do not have one-to-one corresponding translation from one language to another (Schwieter & Prior, 2020). For instance, the Malay word "angka" can be translated into "number", "digit", and "figure" in English, and thus have one-to-many mapping from Malay (source language) to English (target language). ...
... Translation ambiguity could be driven by several reasons (Degani & Tokowicz, 2013;Prior et al., 2011;Schwieter & Prior, 2020). For example, translation ambiguity happens when meanings of a source word can be represented by different translations in the target language (e.g., Malay homonyms "mangga" can be translated into "mango", a type of fruit, and "lock", a tool that keeps door fastened, in English), or when a specific meaning of a source word (e.g., "batu" that refers to the solid substance found in the ground) can be translated into several possible English translations that share similar meanings (e.g., synonyms "rock" and "stone"). ...
... For instance, the English word "thick" covers the meaning of "not thin" for both solid and liquid substances, however these concepts are distinctly represented by "tebal (for solid)" and "pekat (for liquid)" in Malay. There is currently no psycholinguistic database that provides translation ambiguity for every word that exist in any given language pairs (Schwieter & Prior, 2020). Nevertheless, several translation norming studies had been conducted to estimate the prevalence of translation ambiguity for specific language pairs. ...
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Translation equivalents are widely used in bilingual research concerning word processing (e.g., Eddington & Tokowicz, 2013; Jouravlev & Jared, 2020) and second-language vocabulary learning (e.g., Bracken et al., 2017; Degani et al., 2014). Although translation norms exist in several languages, to date there are no Malay-English translation norms. This study presents the first Malay-English translation norms collected with highly proficient Malay-English bilinguals. Furthermore, the study investigates the impact of lexical characteristics on translation ambiguity. The forward translation (FT) task (N = 30) collected English translations for 1004 Malay words selected from the Malay Lexicon Project (Yap et al., 2010), and subsequently the backward translation (BT) task (N = 30) gathered Malay translations for 845 English words obtained from the FT phase. The data revealed a high prevalence of translation ambiguity in both translation directions. Specifically, verbs, adjectives, and class-ambiguous words were more translation-ambiguous than nouns. Furthermore, within-language semantic variability and word length were positively correlated with translation ambiguity, whereas word frequency only correlated with translation ambiguity in FT. Word length and word frequency of the source words and their translations were positively correlated. Intriguingly, only in FT were bilinguals with higher Malay proficiency more likely to provide accurate and dominant translations for the Malay words. These findings contrast with those reported in translation norming studies involving other language pairs. The translation norms provide a useful resource for bilingual language studies involving Malay-English bilinguals.
... Translation ambiguity is the one-to-many mapping of word forms and meanings between a source and target language (Schwieter & Prior, 2020), often including homographs, homophones, homonymy, and morphological ambiguities (Prior et al., 2011). Tokowicz et al. (2002) investigated the correspondence between 562 English words translated into Dutch and German and found that 25% of them had multiple meanings in Dutch and 40% of them had multiple meanings in German. ...
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Aims and Objectives: Translation ambiguous words are lexical items with one-to-many equivalents in another language. Some of these equivalents are more dominant (i.e., more frequently used) than others. The aim of the present study is to explore non-target language activation of translation ambiguous words among Chinese-English bilinguals. Methodology: The implicit priming paradigm was used in three experiments to explore: the activation of primary and secondary first language (L1) translations when bilinguals process second language (L2) translation ambiguous words (Experiment 1); the effect of L1 translation repetition on the processing of semantically related words in an L2 (Experiment 2); and whether such patterns are observed in the reverse direction, i.e., whether L2 primary translations are activated when processing L1 translation ambiguous words (Experiment 3). Data and Analysis: We use repeated measures ANOVAs to analyze the data. Findings/conclusions: Experiment 1 showed that when processing pairs of semantically unrelated L2 words, primary L1 translation equivalents are activated, but not secondary L1 translation equivalents. Experiment 2 found that when the target L2 words were semantically related, performance was facilitated when their translation equivalents were the same L1 word (i.e., implicitly repeated). Similarly, Experiment 3 showed that when processing L1 words, the L2 translation equivalents are automatically activated. Moreover, under semantically related conditions, implicit repetition of the non-target L2 translation facilitated L1 judgements, while under semantically unrelated conditions, L2 implicit repetition hampered L1 judgements. Originality: Most research on cross-language activation has examined L1 activation during L2 processing. However, few have investigated the reverse and findings from these few studies are inconsistent. Moreover, research on cross-language activation has mainly investigated the activation of primary translation equivalents, with very little focus on secondary translations. The present study uses the implicit priming paradigm to address these gaps in the literature. Significance: The findings support interactive theories of bilingual processing.
... After concluding that child engagement is contextually and culturally defined, it would be valuable to learn how child engagement is viewed in non-western countries. Whereas we recognize that our focus on peer-reviewed papers and language limitations might have introduced a bias against research from non-western countries, we also acknowledge that additional inclusion of non-peer reviewed literature written in other languages could be problematic due to potential translational ambiguity (Schwieter & Prior, 2020), or even a lack of equivalent term when translating child engagement to other languages. Furthermore, we have identified only 25 validation studies, some of which validated the same measures, whereas the total number of the identified established measures was 77. ...
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The purpose of this scoping review was to explore operationalizations and related conceptualizations of young children’s engagement in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. The literature search was conducted in March 2021 across ERIC, PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science databases, with the aim of identifying studies where child engagement or involvement in ECEC settings was quantitatively assessed. The search resulted in 5965 articles, of which 286 were included in this review. Data were extracted about engagement conceptualization, theoretical frameworks, study population, study design, and engagement measurement tools and methods. Findings show variations in definitions and measurement of child engagement. Almost two-thirds of the studies lacked an explicit definition of child engagement. Young children’s engagement was typically defined as behaviors and interactions with the social and material environment, while involvement was depicted as an internal experience. The most common method of measuring children’s engagement in ECEC was observations by an external observer, followed by teacher surveys. Seventy-seven unique established measures of child engagement were identified. About one-third of the identified studies relied on unestablished measures of child engagement. Measures of general child engagement in ECEC had a focus on behavioral aspects of engagement, whereas most measures with a focus on engagement in academic activities also included cognitive and emotional aspects. To advance the research of child engagement in ECEC settings, more attention should be put into clarifying the concept of child engagement in terms of its generalizability, specificity, and temporality. Corresponding operationalizations should be precisely described. Our recommendations also include validating existing measures of child engagement and developing self-reports for young children.
... A psychological approach that provides further insight into the prevalence of different types of equivalence comes from first translations studies investigating translation ambiguity (see Schwieter & Prior, 2020, for a recent overview). The degree of translation ambiguity strongly depends on how related the source and target language were. ...
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A great majority of people around the world know more than one language. So, how does knowing one language affect the learning and use of additional languages? The question of cross-language influences is the focus of this book. Do bilinguals hear, understand, and produce language and meaning differently because of the languages they speak? How well can theoretical and computational models of language processing and acquisition explain and predict bilingual use patterns and acquisition trajectories? What learner, language, and context characteristics influence bilingual comprehension and production? This book provides a state-of-the-art review and critique of research into cross-language influences in phonology, lexicon, and morphosyntax, and suggests directions for future research. The interdisciplinary nature of the book bridges the gap between research on bilingualism and second language acquisition. The book will be of interest to graduate students, teachers, and researchers in linguistics and second language acquisition, cognitive psychology, and language education.
... Words with multiple translations are referred to as 'translation ambiguous', and these words are more difficult to learn than 'translation unambiguous' words with a single translation 1 at the beginning stages of L2 learning for naive learners (Degani and Tokowicz, 2010;Degani et al., 2014). This difficulty with translation-ambiguous relative to translation-unambiguous words is referred to as the 'translation-ambiguity disadvantage'; this disadvantage persists throughout the L2 proficiency continuum (for reviews, see Schweiter and Prior, 2020;, and applies to both naive learners and lifelong bilinguals . Furthermore, the difficulty applies to performance on both translation recognition (Boada et al., 2013;Degani and Tokowicz, 2010;Degani et al., 2014;Eddington and Tokowicz, 2013;Laxén and Lavaur, 2010;Prior et al., 2013) and translation production tasks (Basnight-Brown and Altarriba, 2014;Basnight-Brown et al., 2020;Degani and Tokowicz, 2010;Degani et al., 2014;Prior et al., 2013;Tokowicz and Kroll, 2007). ...
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Some words have more than one translation across languages. Such translation-ambiguous words are harder to learn, recognize, and produce for individuals across the language learning spectrum. Past research demonstrates that learning both translations of translation-ambiguous words on consecutive trials confers an accuracy advantage relative to learning them on separate sessions. We tested the proposal that presenting the two translations of translation-ambiguous words simultaneously on the screen could facilitate the formation of a more integrated mapping, because this would enable learners to make direct comparisons between them, whether implicitly or explicitly. We predicted that this facilitation would especially hold for translation-ambiguous words with related translations. Fifty native English speakers learned 48 German words with one or two translations that varied in the meaning similarity of their translations. Paired associate training took place on a Monday, and a first language (L1) to second language (L2) translation production test took place on Wednesday and Friday. Generally, higher translation similarity facilitated translation speed. In accuracy, training condition interacted with the similarity of the translations; translation accuracy was more affected by translation similarity in the simultaneous condition and went up as similarity increased. Overall, the consecutive condition demonstrated higher accuracy and faster reaction times than the simultaneous training condition, suggesting that learners may have been unable to successfully divide their study time between multiple words on the screen without explicit instruction.
... In such studies, equivalence is typically operationalised as a binary variable: Either the relationship between prime and target is one of equivalence (in the critical condition) or it is not (in the unrelated condition). However, there is ample evidence that in most cases, more than one translation is possible and correct (e.g., Prior, Macwhinney, and Kroll 2007;Wen and van Heuven 2017a;Schwieter and Prior 2020). For example, Wen and van Heuven (2017a) present translation norms for 1,429 English words and their Chinese translations. ...
Article
The manuscript provides readers with a basic methodological toolset for experimental psycholinguistic studies on translation. Following a description of key methodological concepts and the rationale behind experimental designs in psycholinguistics, we discuss experimental paradigms adopted from bilingualism research, which potentially constitute a methodological foundation for studies investigating the psycholinguistics of translation. Specifically, we show that priming paradigms possess several inherent advantages which make them particularly suitable for research on translation. The manuscript critically discusses key methodological problems associated with such paradigms and illustrates the opportunities they may offer for translation research, concludes with a review of past and current translation process research highlighting ways in which these can contribute to the issues raised by cross-linguistic priming studies.
Article
The degree of semantic equivalence of translation pairs is typically measured by asking bilinguals to rate the semantic similarity of them or comparing the number and meaning of dictionary entries. Such measures are subjective, labor-intensive, and unable to capture the fine-grained variation in the degree of semantic equivalence. Thompson et al. (in Nature Human Behaviour, 4(10), 1029–1038, 2020) propose a computational method to quantify the extent to which translation equivalents are semantically aligned by measuring the contextual use across languages. Here, we refine this method to quantify semantic alignment of English–Chinese translation equivalents using word2vec based on the proposal that the degree of similarity between the contexts associated with a word and those of its multiple translations vary continuously. We validate our measure using semantic alignment from GloVe and fastText, and data from two behavioral datasets. The consistency of semantic alignment induced across different models confirms the robustness of our method. We demonstrate that semantic alignment not only reflects human semantic similarity judgment of translation equivalents but also captures bilinguals’ usage frequency of translations. We also show that our method is more cognitively plausible than Thompson et al.’s method. Furthermore, the correlations between semantic alignment and key psycholinguistic factors mirror those between human-rated semantic similarity and these variables, indicating that computed semantic alignment reflects the degree of semantic overlap of translation equivalents in the bilingual mental lexicon. We further provide the largest English–Chinese translation equivalent dataset to date, encompassing 50,088 translation pairs for 15,734 English words, their dominant Chinese translation equivalents, and their semantic alignment Rc values.
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Background The current cognitive tests have been developed based on and standardized against Western constructs and normative data. With older people of minority ethnic background increasing across Western countries, there is a need for cognitive screening tests to address factors which influence performance bias and timely diagnostic dementia accuracy. The diagnostic accuracy in translated and culturally adapted cognitive screening tests and their impact on test performance in diverse populations have not been well addressed to date. Objective This review aims to highlight considerations relating to the adaptation processes, language, cultural influences, impact of immigration, and level of education to assess for dementia in non-Western and/or non-English speaking populations. Methods We conducted a systematic search for studies addressing the effects of translation and cultural adaptations of cognitive screening tests (developed in a Western context) upon their diagnostic accuracy and test performance across diverse populations. Four electronic databases and manual searches were conducted, using a predefined search strategy. A narrative synthesis of findings was conducted. Results Search strategy yielded 2,890 articles, and seventeen studies (4,463 participants) met the inclusion criteria. There was variability in the sensitivity and specificity of cognitive tests, irrespective of whether they were translated only, culturally adapted only, or both. Cognitive test performance was affected by education, linguistic ability, and aspects of acculturation. Conclusions We highlight the importance of translating and culturally adapting tests that have been developed in the Western context. However, these findings should be interpreted with caution as results varied due to the broad selection of included cognitive tests.
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Research focused on the cognitive processes surrounding bilingual language representation has revealed the important role that translation ambiguity plays in how languages are stored in memory (Tokowicz & Kroll, 2007). In addition, translation of emotionally related information has been shown to be challenging because a direct translation does not always exist (Basnight-Brown & Altarriba, 2014). The focus of the current study was to explore the processing of ambiguous words for translations that differ in orthography. In Experiment 1, Chinese-English bilinguals translated concrete and abstract words that differed in the number of translations across languages. In Experiment 2, emotion words were introduced into the context, in order to examine differences in emotion translation across languages. The results revealed that words with a single translation were produced faster and more accurately than words that had multiple translations. Finally, translation of emotional stimuli was faster when translating Chinese words as compared to English words.
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Second language (L2) learners need to continually learn new L2 words as well as additional meanings of previously learned L2 words. The present study investigated the influence of semantic similarity on the growth curve of learning of artificially paired new meanings of previously known L2 words in Chinese–English bilinguals. The results of a translation recognition task showed that related meanings are learned faster and more accurately than unrelated meanings. The advantage of learning related new meaning persisted and increased for a week after learning the new meanings. These results suggest that semantic similarities impact the learning of new meanings for known L2 words, and that the shared features between previously known and new meanings of a word facilitate the process of incorporating the related new meaning into the lexical semantic network. Our results are discussed under the framework of the connectionist model.
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Ambiguous words are hard to learn, yet little is known about what causes this difficulty. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between the representations of new and prior meanings of ambiguous words in second language (L2) learning, and to explore the function of inhibitory control on L2 ambiguous word learning at the initial stage of learning. During a 4-day learning phase, Chinese–English bilinguals learned 30 novel English words for 30 min per day using bilingual flashcards. Half of the words to be learned were unambiguous (had one meaning) and half were ambiguous (had two semantically unrelated meanings learned in sequence). Inhibitory control was introduced as a subject variable measured by a Stroop task. The semantic representations established for the studied items were probed using a cross-language semantic relatedness judgment task, in which the learned English words served as the prime, and the targets were either semantically related or unrelated to the prime. Results showed that response latencies for the second meaning of ambiguous words were slower than for the first meaning and for unambiguous words, and that performance on only the second meaning of ambiguous words was predicted by inhibitory control ability. These results suggest that, at the initial stage of L2 ambiguous word learning, the representation of the second meaning is weak, probably interfered with by the representation of the prior learned meaning. Moreover, inhibitory control may modulate learning of the new meanings, such that individuals with better inhibitory control may more effectively suppress interference from the first meaning, and thus learn the new meaning more quickly.
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We present Chinese translation norms for 1,429 English words. Chinese-English bilinguals (N = 28) were asked to provide the first Chinese translation that came to mind for 1,429 English words. The results revealed that 71 % of the English words received more than one correct translation indicating the large amount of translation ambiguity when translating from English to Chinese. The relationship between translation ambiguity and word frequency, concreteness and language proficiency was investigated. Although the significant correlations were not strong, results revealed that English word frequency was positively correlated with the number of alternative translations, whereas English word concreteness was negatively correlated with the number of translations. Importantly, regression analyses showed that the number of Chinese translations was predicted by word frequency and concreteness. Furthermore, an interaction between these predictors revealed that the number of translations was more affected by word frequency for more concrete words than for less concrete words. In addition, mixed-effects modelling showed that word frequency, concreteness and English language proficiency were all significant predictors of whether or not a dominant translation was provided. Finally, correlations between the word frequencies of English words and their Chinese dominant translations were higher for translation-unambiguous pairs than for translation-ambiguous pairs. The translation norms are made available in a database together with lexical information about the words, which will be a useful resource for researchers investigating Chinese-English bilingual language processing. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13428-016-0761-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Chapter
In the world today, bilingualism is more common than monolingualism. Thus, the default mental lexicon may in fact be the bilingual lexicon. More than ever, social and technological innovation have created a situation in which lexical knowledge may change dramatically throughout an individual’s lifetime. This book offers a new perspective for the understanding of these phenomena and their consequences for the representation of words in the mind and brain. Contributing authors are leaders in the field who provide a re-analysis of key assumptions and a re-focusing of research. They bring new insights and new findings that advance the understanding of both bilingualism and the mental lexicon. This volume serves to generate new directions and advances in bilingualism research.
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Chapter
This chapter discusses the manner in which recent developments in mental lexicon research have created new implications for the understanding of how multilingualism develops and how it is maintained across the lifespan. It considers multilinguals to be persons who are able to understand and speak two or more languages. The chapter discusses the notion of a mental lexicon within the context of its historical roots in generative linguistics and psycholinguistics. It examines two dominant metaphors in the literature: one in which the multilingual person is characterized as possessing interacting lexical stores and the other in which the multilingual person is characterized as possessing a network of interacting lexical items in a single multilingual lexical store. The chapter explores the special role that structurally‐complex words may play in the organization of words in the mind and how the specific nature of a multilingual's lexical system is shaped by the linguistic and morphological properties of the languages.
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This volume is the first dedicated to the growing field of theory and research on second language processing and parsing. The fourteen papers in this volume offer cutting-edge research using a number of different languages (e.g., Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, French, German, English) and structures (e.g., relative clauses, wh-gaps, gender, number) to examine various issues in second language processing: first language influence, whether or not non-natives can achieve native-like processing, the roles of context and prosody, the effects of working memory, and others. The researchers include both established scholars and newer voices, all offering important insights into the factors that affect processing and parsing in a second language.
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Translations often do not align directly across languages, and indirect mappings reduce the accuracy of language learning. To facilitate examination of this issue, we developed a new continuous measure for quantifying the semantic relatedness of words with more than one translation (hereafter translation-ambiguous words). Participants rated the similarity of each translation to every other translation, yielding a Translation Semantic Variability (TSV) score, ranging from 1.00 (unrelated) to 7.00 (related). Then, we determined how relatedness between translations affects translation-ambiguous word learning from German to English. German words with low TSV scores were recognized as translations more slowly and less accurately than German words with high TSV scores. TSV explains unique variance beyond the previously-used dichotomous classification of words as form vs. meaning ambiguous. We propose that the relatedness of the translation alternatives influences learning because it affects the ease with which a one-to-one mapping can be established between form and meaning.