From bilingualism to professionalism: the effect of bilingual dominance and professional experience on translation quality in Chinese-to-English translation

This study investigates the effect of bilingual dominance and professional experience on the quality of Chinese-to-English translation. Forty-two bilingual translators participated and provided data on their bilingual background, professional experience, and translation output. The results of the regression analyses revealed a significant negative correlation between bilingual dominance and translation quality, with professional variables significantly enhancing the models’ explanatory power. The results suggest that while a balanced bilingual dominance is crucial, professional expertise and target language immersion are strong predictors of translation quality. The findings have implications for the consideration of both bilingual and professional variables in developing translation competence and highlight the need for further research to explore additional influential variables on translation quality.