Introduction Bilingual memory representation has received considerable attention from many researchers for several years. For less fluent bilinguals, semantic access is indirect via the first language words. For fluent bilinguals, semantic access is direct. How is the transformation processing from the indirect access to the direct access? The present study tested semantic access of differently familiar second language words of bilinguals by two experiments with the task of cross-language repetition priming. Method Participants were less proficient Chinese-English bilinguals in Experiment 1 and proficient Chinese-English bilinguals in Experiment 2. Both of two experiments were carried out on computers using E-Prime software. There were study phase and test phase during each experiment in this study. Participants were instructed to complete the animacy decision tasks in study phase in the English and lexical decision tasks in test phase in Chinese. The response time and accurate rates were recorded and SPSS 10.0 software was used to analyze the results data. Results The response time to the words studied was significantly faster than that to the words unstudied for the unfamiliar second language words both in experiment 1 and in experiment 2. Whereas for the familiar second language words, there was no significant difference between the response time to the words studied and that to the words unstudied. For the accurate rates, the results of the experiments were consistent with that on response time. Results of the two experiments showed that bilinguals can access to the conceptual representation of the familiar second language words directly and to the conceptual representation of the unfamiliar second language words indirectly. Conclusion Semantic access is regulated by second language words familiarity. All the results of recent experimental reports indicate that semantic access of second language in late bilinguals’ memory representation is basically experiential.