Translation Recognition and Translation Production: Comparing a New and an Old Tool in the Study of Bilingualism

• Published in: Language learning 1995-09, Vol.45 (3), p.467-509
• Main Authors: de Groot, Annette M. B., Comijs, Hannie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied linguistics; Associative Learning; Bilingualism; Cognates; College Students; Comparative Analysis; Computer Software; Correlation; English (Second Language); Human translation; Linguistics; Memory; Netherlands (Amsterdam); Rating Scales; Second Language Instruction; Tables (Data); Test Construction; Test Results; Textbook Content; Translation; Word Recognition
• ISSN: 0023-8333; 1467-9922
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1995.tb00449.x

This study explored the “translation‐recognition” task. Each trial in this task presents a word pair, one word in L1, the second in L2. The participant has to decide whether or not the words within a pair are translations of one another. Performance is compared with that in translation production, where on each trial the participant has to come up with the translation of the presented word. The results of two experiments, one for 40 adult Dutch learners of English and the second for 80 people from the same population, suggest that translation recognition and translation production generally respond to the same manipulations. An exception to this pattern emerges when cognates and noncognates are focused on separately. With noncognate materials translation production from L1 to L2 shows a larger role of semantic variables than both translation production from L2 to L1 and translation recognition. Whether within the recognition task cognates and noncognates are presented mixed or blocked, and whether the nontranslation pairs consist of perceptually similar or dissimilar words, or both, do not affect the actual translation‐retrieval process.