Does translation affect cross-linguistic syntactic priming?

Abstract

Aims and objectives:

Bilingual non-selective language activation is evident in priming experiments, where the use of a syntactic structure in production is more likely if the same structure was used in a previous sentence, even across languages. Here, we assess whether having to translate across two languages affects cross-linguistic priming. Because the need to translate and translation experience involve deeper and more automatized syntactic processing, we hypothesized that translating might increase the strength of cross-linguistic syntactic priming.

Methodology:

A total of 111 English–Spanish bilinguals were randomly assigned to complete a syntactic priming task in one of four conditions. Participants saw a prime either in active or passive voice in English, Spanish, Codeswitched, or Translation condition, and described a picture in Spanish, their second and non-dominant language.

Data and analysis:

Logistic mixed-effect models were constructed to analyze the extent to which condition and voice (active/passive) predicted the likelihood of priming. We additionally examined the moderating role of translation experience on both variables.

Findings:

Overall, results show a similar priming effect across conditions, and only a weak trend for translation experience to enhance priming.

Implications:

Together, results suggest that cross-linguistic priming is a robust phenomenon that is largely impermeable to translation processing and experience.