The present study investigated the effect of orthographical and phonological similarities between Chinese and Japanese in an oral translation task with Japanese kanji words. The participants were asked to translate spoken Japanese kanji words into spoken Chinese. The results showed that two translation routes were used by the participants. With both high- and low-phonological-similarity words, a facilitatory effect of orthographic similarity was observed; with low-orthographic-similarity words. an inhibitory effect of phonological similarity was seen. These results suggest that in word translation, orthographic similarity exerts a similar effect in both comprehension and production. whereas phonological similarity has a different effect in comprehension and production
