Eddington, Chelsea Marie
(2011)
EXAMINING ENGLISH-GERMAN TRANSLATION AMBIGUITY USING PRIMED TRANSLATION RECOGNITION.
Master's Thesis, University of Pittsburgh.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
Many words have more than one translation across languages. Such "translation ambiguous" words are generally translated more slowly and less accurately than their unambiguous counterparts. Additionally, there are multiple sources of translation ambiguity including within language semantic ambiguity and near-synonymy. The present study examines the extent to which word context and translation dominance reduce the difficulties associated with translation ambiguity, using a primed translation recognition task. We further examine how dominance and linguistic context influence translation ambiguity stemming from the two sources, specifically translation ambiguity derived from semantic ambiguity ("meaning translation ambiguity") and translation ambiguity derived from near-synonymy ("synonym translation ambiguity"). Participants were presented with English-German word pairs that were preceded by a related or unrelated prime and were asked to decide if the word pairs were translation equivalents or not. The speed and accuracy with which pairs were recognized as correct translations was examined with respect to translation ambiguity, source of ambiguity, prime relatedness, and translation dominance. Translation-unambiguous pairs were recognized more quickly and accurately than translation-ambiguous pairs. Further, target-translation pairs preceded by a related prime were responded to more quickly than pairs preceded by an unrelated prime. Dominant translations were responded to more quickly than subordinate translations, and source of ambiguity and translation dominance marginally interacted, such that meaning translation-ambiguous words were more influenced by dominance than synonym translation-ambiguous words. We discuss the results in reference to models of bilingual memory and propose a new model that makes specific predictions about translation ambiguity, the Revised Hierarchical Model of Translation Ambiguity.
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Details
| Item Type: |
University of Pittsburgh ETD
|
| Status: |
Unpublished |
| Creators/Authors: |
| Creators | Email | Pitt Username | ORCID  |
|---|
| Eddington, Chelsea Marie | cme10@pitt.edu | CME10 | |
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| ETD Committee: |
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| Date: |
6 June 2011 |
| Date Type: |
Completion |
| Defense Date: |
18 April 2011 |
| Approval Date: |
6 June 2011 |
| Submission Date: |
21 April 2011 |
| Access Restriction: |
5 year -- Restrict access to University of Pittsburgh for a period of 5 years. |
| Institution: |
University of Pittsburgh |
| Schools and Programs: |
Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences > Psychology |
| Degree: |
MS - Master of Science |
| Thesis Type: |
Master's Thesis |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: |
primed translation recognition; Revised Hierarchical Model of Translation Ambigui; second language processing; semantic ambiguity; translation ambiguity |
| Other ID: |
http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04212011-192654/, etd-04212011-192654 |
| Date Deposited: |
10 Nov 2011 19:40 |
| Last Modified: |
15 Nov 2016 13:41 |
| URI: |
http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/id/eprint/7464 |
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