Semantic access in number word translation: the role of crosslingual lexical similarity

The revised hierarchical model of bilingualism (e.g., Kroll & Stewart, 1994) assumes that second language (L2) words primarily access semantics through their first language (L1) translation equivalents. Consequently, backward translation from L2 to L1 should not imply semantic access but occurs through lexical wordform associations. However, recent research with Dutch-French bilinguals showed that both backward and forward translation of number words yields a semantic number magnitude effect (Duyck & Brysbaert, 2004), providing evidence for strong form-to-meaning mappings of L2 number words. In two number-word translation experiments with Dutch-English-German trilinguals, the present study investigated whether semantic access in L1-L2 and L1-L3 number-word translation depends on lexical similarity of the languages involved. We found that backward translation from these more similar language pairs to L1 still yields a semantic magnitude effect, whereas forward translation does not, in contrast with the Dutch-French results of Duyck and Brysbaert (2004). We argue against a dual route model of word translation and suggest that the degree of semantic activation in translation depends on lexical form overlap between translation equivalents.