Abstract

We collected number of translations norms on 562 Dutch-English translation pairs from several previous studies of cross-language processing. Participants were highly proficient Dutch-English bilinguals. Form and semantic similarity ratings were collected on the 1003 possible translation pairs for the original word pairs that were generated by the norming participants. Approximately 40% of the translations were rated as being similar with respect to spelling/sound across languages (i.e., were 'cognates'). Approximately 45% of the translations were rated as being highly semantically similar across languages. At least 40% of the words in each direction of translation had more than one translation. The form similarity ratings were found to be highly reliable even when obtained using different bilinguals and modified rating procedures. Number of translations and meaning factors significantly predict semantic similarity of translation pairs. In future research, these norms may be used to determine the number of translations of words to control for or study this factor. These norms are available at http://www.talkbank.org/norms/tokowicz/.