A Common Conceptual Code In Bilinguals: Evidence From Simultaneous Interpretation
William P. Isham, Harlan L. Lane · Sign language studies · 1994
Two prominent views of the relations between a bilingual’s language repertoires lead to different accounts of simultaneous interpretation. According to the “lexical hypothesis,” interpretation employs links between lexical equivalents in the bilingual speaker’s two lexicons. According to the “conceptual mediation hypothesis,” interpretation engages conceptual structures shared by the two lexicons. Simultaneous interpretation was compared to transliteration, which models the essential aspect of the lexical hypothesis; i.e. the process of rapid lexical lookup of translation equivalents. In an experiment using cloze completions that required either simple recall or inferences, subjects were less accurate in making inferences than in recalling information in both the interpreting and the transliterating tasks, but the difference between recall and inference was larger in the transliterating task. This interaction between task and cloze type indicates that different processes mediate interpretation and transliteration and thus weakens the lexical hypothesis as an account of simultaneous interpretation. This finding provides support to logical arguments that claim that direct links between a bilingual’s two lexicons are not sufficient to explain simultaneous interpretation.