Linguistic latency in translingual works: visibility, traceability and the threshold of crosslinguistic influence

This study examines crosslinguistic influence to uncover patterns of linguistic latency in translingual literature. Through a comparative analysis of Tomer Gardi's Broken German and Xiaolu Guo's A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, this article challenges traditional views of latency as a static textual property, reconceptualising it through three findings. First, linguistic latency exists on a continuum, spanning a wide spectrum from nearly imperceptible shifts and simplified syntax to highly visible grammatical deviations, metalinguistic clues, and transfers. Second, latency is a reader-oriented dimension and not a property of the text, as a text does not inherently possess a hidden language. Latency is a subjective phenomenon of reader reception, where the recognition of underlying language contact depends on the reader's unique linguistic competence, background, attitude, and interpretive skills. Third, latency can be determined by visibility and traceability, which are distinct parameters. Visibility corresponds to the perception of a disruption in the narrative language, and traceability to the ability to identify that disruption back to a specific source tongue. These dimensions act as independent axes. Finally, reframing latency as a reader-centered phenomenon provides a framework for studying different categories of literary texts, while opening paths for future empirical research with the real reader.