  Visualizations today are used across a wide range of languages and cultures.
Yet the extent to which language impacts how we reason about data and
visualizations remains unclear. In this paper, we explore the intersection of
visualization and language through a cross-language study on estimative
probability tasks with icon-array visualizations. Across Arabic, English,
French, German, and Mandarin, n = 50 participants per language both chose
probability expressions - e.g. likely, probable - to describe icon-array
visualizations (Vis-to-Expression), and drew icon-array visualizations to match
a given expression (Expression-to-Vis). Results suggest that there is no clear
one-to-one mapping of probability expressions and associated visual ranges
between languages. Several translated expressions fell significantly above or
below the range of the corresponding English expressions. Compared to other
languages, French and German respondents appear to exhibit high levels of
consistency between the visualizations they drew and the words they chose.
Participants across languages used similar words when describing scenarios
above 80% chance, with more variance in expressions targeting mid-range and
lower values. We discuss how these results suggest potential differences in the
expressiveness of language as it relates to visualization interpretation and
design goals, as well as practical implications for translation efforts and
future studies at the intersection of languages, culture, and visualization.
Experiment data, source code, and analysis scripts are available at the
following repository: https://osf.io/g5d4r/.
