What does translation mean to children

Abstract The position of translation is ambiguous within human language capacity. We do not know enough to decide whether it is the fifth element (besides speaking, listening, writing and reading) of the capacity in question. If the answer is ‘yes’, it means for us that translation must have both nature and nurture elements. Our experiment attempts0 to shed light on these elements and their effect on the course of translating activity. Our experiment is of a psycholinguistic character and involved what is known as Miniature Artificial Language. The basis of a given Miniature Artificial Language is a manipulated fragment of a natural language (grammar, lexis, etc.). In our experiment, children were given a problem‐solving situation which reduced the linguistic and enhanced the ‘natural logic’ character of the task.