Lost in Translation: How Does Bilingualism Shape Reader Preferences for Annotated Charts?

Figure 1: Participants' preferences and comprehension accuracy for visualizations ranked across languages. In English, charts with a high-volume of annotations were most preferred, though full-text versions had the highest comprehension accuracy. In Tamil and Arabic, full-text versions were both the most preferred and most accurate, with medium-volume annotations outperforming high-volume annotations in comprehension. Charts with a low-volume of annotations were moderately preferred and had low comprehension performance across all languages, though slightly ranked higher in Non-English conditions compared to English.