Mapping the small-world properties of brain networks in Chinese to English simultaneous interpreting by using functional near-infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the small-world properties of functional brain networks in Chinese to English simultaneous interpreting (SI) using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). In particular, the fNIRS neuroimaging combined with complex network analysis was performed to extract the features of functional brain networks underling three translation strategies associated with Chinese to English SI: “transcoding” that takes the “shortcut” linking translation equivalents between Chinese and the English, “code-mixing” that basically does not involve bilingual processing, and “transphrasing” that takes the “long route” involving a monolingual processing of meaning in Chinese and then another monolingual processing of meaning in English. Our results demonstrated that the small-world network topology was able to distinguish well between the transcoding, code-mixing and transphrasing strategies related to Chinese to English SI.