Two birds, one stone – idioms across languages and the language brokering effect

Abstract

The study investigated the experience of language brokering in highly proficient Chinese-English bilinguals where 50% of them were language brokers. Essentially, language brokering as a phenomenon is the activity of informal translation to facilitate communication between persons and languages. Predominantly from first- and second-generation immigrant households, brokers take on many different settings and materials to achieve these informal translation activities and tasks. It has been shown in previous studies, that brokers tend to be more agile and dynamic across languages. The present study used counterpart idioms to test language brokers and non-brokers recording their accuracy. The counterpart idiom judgment task tested idiom type (decomposability and familiarity) in both English and Chinese language directions [e.g., English direction “kill two birds with one stone”, answer “一石二鸟”- pin yin: yī shí èr niǎo (figurative meaning in both English and Chinese – “to succeed in achieving two things in a single action”)]. Findings showed that brokers similarly scored in decomposable idioms (D) and non-decomposable (ND) particularly in Chinese. Non-brokers showed significantly differently in both decomposable (D) and non-decomposable (ND) idioms where decomposable idioms (D) scored greater than non-decomposable (ND) in Chinese. Both groups responded more accurately in D than ND in English. Overall, brokers had a higher accuracy than non-brokers and responded more similarly across languages, idiom types (decomposable and non-decomposable), and familiar and unfamiliar idioms.