The relative influence of English (L2) vs. Russian (L1) on the translation from Swedish (L3) into Russian depending on proficiency in L3

Författare

Nadezda Tkachenko

Summary, in English

This study examined the relative influence of L1 and L2 on the translation from L3 to L1 depending on the proficiency level of participants in the L3. Native speakers of Russian, matched for proficiency in English (L2), translated words from Swedish (L3) into Russian (L1). The words were Russian-Swedish, English-Swedish, English-Russian-Swedish cognates, and noncognates. Three groups participated in the experiment: beginners in Swedish, intermediate learners of Swedish, and advanced Swedish speakers. The results show that the speed of translation depends on both word type and proficiency level. As expected, beginners responded more slowly than two other groups, but responses to English-Russian-Swedish cognates and English-Swedish cognates appeared to be faster than Russian-Swedish cognates and noncognates, showing that the influence of English is relatively stronger than the influence of Russian. Advanced speakers were faster than beginners, but were unexpectedly slower than intermediate learners and showed no influence of English, translating English-Swedish cognates and noncognates with almost similar speed. Moreover, they were slower than intermediate participants in translating even Russian-Swedish cognates. Intermediate learners were equally fast in translating English-Russian-Swedish cognates and Russian-Swedish cognates, and relatively fast in translating English-Swedish cognates. The findings are discussed in terms of usage and activation patterns of the three languages.

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