The structure of the bilingual lexicon: Evidence from a semantic blocked word translation task with Chinese–English bilinguals

The question of how the mental lexicon of bilinguals is organized to incorporate more than a single language is of long-standing interest. Evidence regarding the structure of the bilingual system comes from word translation tasks, with a central issue whether translation speed, on the one hand, and semantic effects, on the other, are asymmetric dependent on direction of translation. We report a study in which unbalanced Chinese–English bilinguals translated words either in forward (first language to second language, i.e. L1 to L2) or backward (L2 to L1) direction. Words were presented in sets of semantically homogeneous or heterogeneous experimental blocks (‘semantic blocked naming/translation’). We found substantially faster forward than backward translation speed, as well as an inhibitory semantic effect which was larger in backward than in forward translation. We suggest that a word presented in L2 leads to a less stable/rich conceptual activation than one presented in L1, which in subsequent translation leads to slower translation times and larger semantic effects in backward than in forward translation. Results are informative with regard to the structure and organization of the bilingual lexicon.