Natural translation ability in French-English bilingual school-age children: A study of source language errors in naive child-translators.

摘要

The present study investigates the nature of translation ability in Fluent and Non-Fluent bilingual students. The study examines the effects of level of bilingual fluency, proficiency in the Source and Target languages of the translation, type of translation difficulty, and modality of task on performance. The study also examines the relationship between metalinguistic awareness and translation ability.;Subjects were 92 fifth through seventh grade French-English bilingual students attending an international school in Geneva, Switzerland. Between-group factors were grade and bilingual fluency. Within-group factors were Target Language (French or English), Type of translation pitfall (structure-based or lexical-based), and modality of translation task (oral or written).;Students completed four translation tasks, crossing Source-Target languages and modality of task. The translation tasks contained translation "pitfalls" that were designed specifically to elicit source language errors. Source language errors occur when a source language structure or lexical phrase is incorrectly inserted into the Target Language structure. Oral and written measures of language proficiency and metalinguistic awareness were assessed in both French and English.;The findings are consistent with the claim that translation is a widely distributed ability among bilingual students. The results revealed significant interaction effects for degree of bilingual fluency, direction of translation, and type of translation difficulty. The results also revealed a significant main effect for grade. Rate of Source Language Errors was not correlated across Target Languages, and task modality had little effect on translation performance. The findings regarding the relationship between translation ability and metalinguistic awareness were less clear. The results are discussed in terms of the role of linguistic knowledge in avoiding translation pitfalls, and the different demands of structure-based and lexical-based pitfalls on the ability to access and apply linguistic knowledge. The effect of the primary language of instruction on cognitive-linguistic tasks is also discussed.