‘Don’t forget to close the light!’: ERP evidence for the facilitation of typical translation equivalents in bilingual processing

Abstract

Many erroneous literal translations, often produced by low-proficiency bilinguals, can be attributed to a tendency to favor typical translation equivalents; however, the underlying neural mechanism remains poorly understood. This study investigated this typicality effect in real-time translation with the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique. Mandarin Chinese–English bilinguals were presented with a Chinese verb phrase (e.g., kāi chuānghù “open the window” or kāi diànnăo “turn on the computer”) followed by an English verb (e.g., open (a typical translation) or turn on (an atypical translation)) and judged whether the English verb was an appropriate/congruent translation of the verb in the Chinese verb phrase previously presented (e.g., kāi). Compared to typical translation equivalents, atypical equivalents elicited an N400, indicating retrieval difficulty, and an f-PNP in congruent trials, reflecting the effort to inhibit typical translations and integrate atypical ones. This pattern may arise from differences in resting-level activation between typical and atypical equivalents.