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Eye movements (EM) during naming alphabetic versus logographic stimuli in children with and without developmental dyslexia (DD) were examined for each stimulus separately to identify conspicuous characteristics that influence naming performance. 40 children (group DD = 18; control group C = 22) were taught Chinese characters. EM were recorded during naming alphabetic words, pictures and Chinese characters. Main variables were articulation latencies, numbers and durations of fixations, secondary variables were fixation locations and error rates. Group DD showed significantly longer latencies and more fixations while reading words, but only insignificantly more fixations while naming pictures and Chinese characters. However, their error rate was significantly higher during naming Chinese characters but correlated neither with severity of phonological deficit nor with visual complexity. Their first fixation was significantly more often on the center of characters, in group C on the left. In both groups, EM variables were influenced by conspicuous features of characters, such as visual complexity, composition and structure. EM variables and scanning behavior while naming Chinese characters indicate holistic processing in the visuo-spatial pathway and were affected by conspicuous features of characters. The higher error rate in group DD could be determined by several factors, without a major role of the phonological deficit.

It is unclear whether the brain activity during phonological processing of second languages (L2) is similar to that of the first language (L1) in trilingual individuals, especially when the L1 is logographic, and the L2s are logographic and alphabetic, respectively. To explore this issue, this study examined brain activity during visual and auditory word rhyming tasks in Cantonese–Mandarin–English trilinguals. Thirty Chinese college students whose L1 was Cantonese and L2s were Mandarin and English were recruited. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was conducted while subjects performed visual and auditory word rhyming tasks in three languages (Cantonese, Mandarin, and English). The results revealed that in Cantonese–Mandarin–English trilinguals, whose L1 is logographic and the orthography of their L2 is the same as L1—i.e., Mandarin and Cantonese, which share the same set of Chinese characters—the brain regions for the phonological processing of L2 are different from those of L1; when the orthography of L2 is quite different from L1, i.e., English and Cantonese who belong to different writing systems, the brain regions for the phonological processing of L2 are similar to those of L1. A significant interaction effect was observed between language and modality in bilateral lingual gyri. Regions of interest (ROI) analysis at lingual gyri revealed greater activation of this region when using English than Cantonese and Mandarin in visual tasks.

Chinese characters have been the most challenging aspect of the language to American learners. Whether or not and how to teach Chinese characters to beginner learners have been debated since the 1930s. Nowadays, the ubiquitous presence of computers and tablets has complicated how Chinese characters should be integrated in the curriculum. It is important to systematically review what scholars have proposed regarding curriculum design for teaching characters in the United States. In this systematic review study, an exhaustive search through the past nine decades of scholarship on teaching Chinese characters identified 16 peer-reviewed journal articles published since 1937 that focused on teaching Chinese characters at the level of course design and overall curriculum design for a Chinese program. Two themes regarding character teaching – when and what to teach – were identified. Each theme was analyzed in detail, and a tentative model was proposed based on that analysis.

Alphabetic writing is often considered the ultimate goal in the evolution of writing systems. Against the backdrop of this popular prejudice, this essay presents some distinctive advantages of Chinese characters and calls for a more serious attention to script in translation studies. It explores how the Chinese script shaped cultural traditions in East Asia, enabled dimensions of literary expression closed to alphabetic scripts, and made possible a multilingual East Asian “world without translation” where special reading techniques of Chinese texts using vernacular glossing (called kundoku in Japanese) and face‐to‐face communication through writing (so‐called “brush talk”) made translation unnecessary. The essay concludes by suggesting how early Japanese and Latin literatures – otherwise comparable in their regard for their respective mother cultures China and Greece – launched onto different paths, in part due to the different nature of their script. Attention to script promises to widen the theoretical scope of translation studies decisively.