Chapter 8. Comparing contact effects in translation and second language writing

Abstract

This chapter compares the role of the bilingual text production context in (second language) L2 writing and translation. Although both tasks involve activation of the two languages involved, their influence may differ. To explore this influence against the background of variation along the constraint dimensions, we analyse a corpus of 204 English texts with the help of geometric multivariate analysis based on automatic counts for a range of lexicogrammatical features. The analysis indicates a combined influence of register and expertise and a more subtle effect of the bilingual production context in L2 writing. Although translation involves going back and forth between the source and the target language, translations in our data cluster more with L1 originals in the target language.