Die sprachliche Interferenz als vielschichtige Ursache für Fehler in der Übersetzung
Linguistic interference as a multidimensional cause of translation errors

Author(s): Tomasz Maras
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Translation Studies
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
Keywords: linguistics;interference;error/mistake;translation;translation didactics
Summary/Abstract: The book titled Linguistic interference as a multidimensional cause of translation errors aims at proving three theses: 1. Interlingual linguistic interference between German and Polish is the most significant cause of translation errors that can occur on various linguistic levels.The paper is based on scientific research which claims that linguistic interference is responsible for many errors in the German–Polish language pair. It attempts to illustrate that interference is the most fundamental cause of translation errors. The author proposes a concept for differentiation and classification which is intended to capture interference as a linguistic phenomenon in all its diversity. 2. Most of the (interference) errors committed in translation are due to the interference-induced tendency towards literalness in translation.The aim of this paper is to show the negative aspects of the tendency to literalism in translation and to formulate conclusions that could contribute to the improvement of translation.3. Interference errors in a vast number of cases can be predicted (on different linguistic levels).The third thesis concerns the predictability of interference errors which can occur at different levels of the linguistic system. In particular, the degree of predictability of lexical interference errors is higher than would be implied by the openness of the lexical linguistic subsystem. In order to prove the aforementioned thesis, approximately 350 student translations were collected. They constituted a corpus for excerpting, analysing, classifying and evaluating incorrect utterances formulated by Polish students of German Studies while translating from German into Polish.

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