Translation norms for English and Japanese translation pairs: Translation ambiguity, proficiency, and production...

Translation ambiguity occurs when a word in one language has multiple translations into another language, resulting in slower and less accurate language processing and production. We collected number-of-translation norms for 562 English words into Japanese, of which 70% were translation-ambiguous. When compared with previous norming studies with the same English words, our sample had the highest proportion of ambiguity. We then had a separate group of participants back-translate the correct Japanese translations into English and found that 54% were translation-ambiguous. We further analyzed types of errors in our sample, finding omission errors (i.e., no translation given) to be the most common in both translation directions. Errors made during translation were related to proficiency, wherein higher L2 proficiency was significantly positively correlated with making more semantic-type errors (i.e., providing a semantic associate instead of the correct translation), specifically in the Japanese to English direction. These norms provide information on how translation-ambiguous and translation-unambiguous words are produced in both directions of translation and can be used in future research examining translation ambiguity.