Research into linguistic interference

2.  INTERFERENCE AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS 
This chapter is devoted purely to interference, its definitions and 
characteristics. Interference designates a phenomenon in which a certain 
expression or a passage from the source text is literally transferred into the 
target text. It may include a literal translation of a word, a phrase, an idiom, a 
metaphor, a term or of a whole syntactic structure. Anglicisms are thus 
interferences from English; i.e., anglicisms involve words, idioms, phrases 
literally (and mostly inappropriately) translated from English into another 
language (in our case, into Czech). To a certain degree, the concept of 
interference seems rather indefinite. Nobody can specify where exactly the 
boundary between interference and an accurate (but correct) translation lies. 
The determination of what interference is and what is not is therefore 
sometimes subjective and, in some cases, it can be individual-dependent. What 
someone considers as interference from the source language, someone else 
can perceive as a different kind of mistake or even as a perfectly acceptable 
solution in the target language. Nevertheless, in most cases, interference is 
evident at first sight and the reader sometimes realizes it even without reading 
the source text. He/she can either feel there is something “unnatural” in the text 
or the text seems obscure and incomprehensible (in case that an error occurs 
due to interference and the text is thus misunderstood). Generally speaking, 
interference is a phenomenon that is common to many translations and its 
occurrence varies according to the experience of a translator. 
 
Gideon Toury presents the Interference Law and describes it in the following 
way:  
“According to the law of interference, phenomena pertaining to the make-
up of the source text tend to be transferred to the target text. The extent 

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to which interference is realized depends on the professional experience 
of the translator and the sociocultural conditions in which a translation is 
produced and consumed, so that experienced translators tend to be less 
affected by the make-up of the source-text, and tolerance towards 
interference tends to increase when translation is carried out from a 
highly prestigious culture.” (Baker 2009: 307) 
 
To sum up his statement, Toury mentions one major fact which plays an 
important role in the manifestation of interference and that is the professional 
experience of a translator. It is generally regarded that students‟ translations 
contain more interference that those of the professional translators who have far 
more experience and are better able to withstand interference. Paul Kussmaul 
argues that “we can observe interference both in novices and in advanced 
translators” (Kussmaul 1995: 17-18); but, although even professional translators 
sometimes have difficulties and doubts about the quality of their translations, 
the frequency of occurrence of interference will be greater in works of 
translation trainees.  
“Identifying the differences between novices and professional translators 
has been a major concern of Translation Studies. The assumption in the 
field is that training and experience contribute to translation quality, such 
that trained, experienced translators will generally produce higher-quality 
translations than untrained, inexperienced translators” (Malkiel 2006: 
338). 
 
The presence of interference is one of the factors which affects the quality of 
the final product, and which is subject to the level of experience. In other words, 
interference is, in a way, a universal phenomenon which very often occurs in 
students‟ translations and it therefore deserves more attention. Toury, 
moreover, states that interference seems to be more tolerated in translations 
from a highly prestigious culture (in a way, this claim has to do with the 
concepts presented later in chapter 2.2.). Kufnerová, in her book “Překládání a 
čeština”, adds that a translator is always influenced by the source text language 

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and the degree of this influence depends on the tradition of translating from the 
given culture (Kufnerová 1994: 47-48). 
Another theoretician studying and researching interference is Javier Franco 
Aixelá. According to him, interference “is the importation into the target text of 
lexical, syntactic, cultural or structural items typical of a different semiotic 
system and unusual or non-existent in the target context” (Franco Aixelá 2009: 
75). Interference is thus manifestation of forms or words „unusual‟ or even „non-
existent‟ in the target language whose importation into the target text is 
obviously caused by the source-text formulations. In his paper researching 
lexical interference, Martin Thorovský says: “By „linguistic interference‟ I mean 
an unintentional transfer of some elements of the source language (SL) to the 
target language (TL)” (Thorovský 2009: 86). Thorovský thereby clearly 
expresses that interferences are “unintentional” and thus unconscious 
tendencies which result in mistakes in translations. Brenda Malkiel, another 
researcher, examines interference from a different perspective and she 
operates with this phenomenon in a different context. Besides L1 translations, 
her corpus contains also translations into the subjects‟ second language. 
Translation from L1 into L2 can cause that the tendency to interference is 
stronger than under the more favourable conditions (as denominated by Toury 
1978: 224) – sometimes referred to as “more natural” direction of translation 
(translation into one‟s mother tongue, i.e. L2 into L1 direction). Christopher 
Hopkinson confirms this claim and states that “the issue of linguistic 
interference is a factor in any translation, and when the translator is working 
from L1 into L2, interference from the L1 source text becomes a key element in 
the production of the L2 target text” (Hopkinson 2007: 13). Logically, it is likely 

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that there will be more interference in translations into someone‟s second 
language; but, the “strange” and surprising thing is that interference occurs 
even in L1 translation (which is the subject of this thesis).
 
As Brenda Malkiel 
confirms, “interference is not only a feature of into-L2 translation, but of into-L1 
translation as well” (Malkiel 2006: 339). In this direction, translators work into 
their mother tongue and they are assumed to have perfect command of it. 
Building correct sentences and natural expressions should be effortless in the 
mother tongue; nevertheless, translations show that it is not always the case. 
Translators seem to be largely influenced by the source text (which lies in the 
centre of attention of this research).  
Discussing some of the possible explanations of interference, we should 
also mention how Peter Newmark interprets this concept in one of the 
elementary manuals designed primarily for students of translation, in the 
Glossary at the end of “A Textbook of Translation”. Newmark says that 
interference is “literal translation from SL or third language that does not give 
the right or required sense” (Newmark 1988: 283). This definition is disputable 
because it differs from what we imagine under the concept of interference. In 
fact, he reduces this phenomenon on the level of a word and considers the