An Erp Study On Translation Ambiguity Processing In Chinese-English Bilinguals In Word Context

Translation ambiguity occurs when a word in the source language can be translated to more than one lexical item in the target language.A large number of translation norm studies have revealed the prevalence of translation ambiguity across languages,regardless of whether the two languages have similar writing systems or not.Words with cross-language ambiguity are shown to be processed less proficiently by bilinguals and cost more cognitive effort.Previous translation ambiguity research is mainly behavioral studies on alphabetical languages,which have focused on L1-L2 ambiguity,while little is known about the cognitive mechanism underlying L2-L1 translation-ambiguity processing among cross-script bilinguals.Based on the existing literature and under the framework of the Distributional Conceptual Featural Model and Revised Hierarchical Model of Translation Ambiguity,the current study employed a primed translation recognition paradigm to investigate the following questions:(1)What are the cognitive mechanisms of translation-ambiguous word processing among Chinese-English bilinguals in a related or unrelated word context?(2)How does translation dominance impact Chinese-English bilinguals’ processing of meaning-ambiguous and form-ambiguous words in word context?A primed translation recognition task was used in the current study,and the participants included Twenty-eight postgraduate students who have passed TEM-8(4 males,24 females).Materials include 40 unambiguous words,40 meaning-ambiguous words,and 40 formambiguous words.They appeared after a semantically related or unrelated context word.Participants pushed buttons to judge whether the target Chinese word is a correct translation of the English word while their ERP and behavioral data were recorded.The ERP data were preprocessed using EEGLAB v14.1.1 attached to Matlab R2018 b.Both kinds of data were calculated and statistically compared through two sets of repeated measures ANOVAs using SPSS 26 to comprehensively analyze the translation ambiguity effect caused by translationambiguous words from different sources and the modulation of translation dominance in word context.The results showed that:(i)Chinese-English bilinguals were more difficult to recognize translations of translation-ambiguous words than unambiguous ones.In the unambiguous condition,translation recognition is faster and more accurate,with more positive P200 and less negative N400.This effect is more salient for form-ambiguous words than meaning-ambiguous words.Besides,context relatedness induces a faciliatory effect.Translation pairs are recognized more efficiently when proceeded by a related context word,causing a broadly distributed context relatedness effect in both P200 and N400 intervals.This disambiguating effect is greater for meaning-ambiguous words than form-ambiguous ones.(ii)Translation dominance modulates the translation ambiguity effect.In general,the dominant translation of translationambiguous words is easier to process than their subordinate translation.Recognizing the dominant translation of an ambiguous word is more successful and elicits less negative N400 than its subordinate counterpart.This processing advantage of dominant translation is even greater in the meaning-ambiguous condition,and in a related context.The current research investigates the cognitive mechanism underpinning the processing of translation-ambiguous words among cross-script bilinguals in the L2-L1 direction.Combining the behavioral and electrophysiological results,this study confirms the translation ambiguity effect in word context and examines the influence of translation dominance.Based on the existing studies,the findings of the present research provide new evidence for the processing of translation-ambiguous words in the L2-L1 direction and have implications for both ambiguity processing theories and teaching and learning of translation-ambiguous words.It could help researchers get a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanism underlying L2-L1 translation-ambiguous word processing among cross-script bilinguals,leading to more effective teaching and learning of English translation-ambiguous words in class at home.