The Process of Translation Between English Words and Japanese Words

Abstract

There are two hypotheses about the process of translation. The word association hypothesis proposes that the word represented in one language is translated into the other language directly. The concept mediation hypothesis proposes that the word represented in one language is translated into the other language via the semantic memory common to the two languages. In the present study, the word-word translating task, in which the semantic effect between target and distractor is supposed to be exhibited when the target word is semantically processed, was used to examine the processes of translating English words into Japanese and Japanese words into English. The results did not reveal the semantic effect, supporting the process of translation predicted by the word association hypothesis.