Research into linguistic interference

sense as the most important aspect. From his perspective, an expression 
whose meaning in the source text is understood correctly (and thus the sense is 
preserved in the target text) but whose formulation is unnatural and clumsy, is 
not considered as an interference. In this research, we study interference in a 
broader context. We do not limit only on the lexical level, but we examine even 
interferences which occur above the word level (syntactic interference, 
interference in typography, grammatical interference, etc.). According to this 

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Newmark‟s claim, interference means literal translation of a word and thus 
misunderstanding the sense. This definition is too concise and general; 
nevertheless, in his book “About Translation”, he already deals with this issue in 
more detail. He admits that interference occurs even above the level of words 
and, in a broader sense, it can affect proper names, punctuation, cultural 
elements, etc.  
“In the narrow definition, interference takes place when, apparently 
inappropriately, any feature of the source or a third language – notably a 
syntactic structure, a lexical item, an idiom, a metaphor, or word-order – 
is carried over or literally translated as the case may be into the target 
language (TL) text.” (Newmark 1991: 78) 
 
Moreover, in “About Translation”, Newmark mentions the fact that certain 
types of interference can have its virtues. According to him, it can sometimes be 
seen also as a positive aspect of a translation. “In translation, there are various 
degrees of interference, and its appropriacy depends partly on the type of text 
that is translated; in a literary work, both idiolectal and cultural interference often 
enriches the translation” (Newmark 1991: 78). In other words, the occurrence of 
interference is intentional and even desirable in some cases, and it does not 
always have to be an error. Similar views of foreign elements occurring in 
translations will be discussed in chapter 2.2. Nevertheless, we will be dealing 
with interference which appears in students‟ translations unintentionally and its 
occurrence in the target texts is thus undesirable. In this research, interference 
is perceived as a phenomenon which causes difficulties for the students and 
they are trying to avoid its occurrence in their translations. 
As has already been suggested above, clumsy and unnatural formulations 
can very often serve as indicators of interference occurring in translations. In 
the context of this thesis, even sentences whose meaning is preserved, but 

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which strike the attention of the reader (because they sound weird) can serve 
as indicators of interference. The concrete criteria according to which 
interferences are identified in the analysis will be presented in chapter 4. 
To conclude, interference is a phenomenon occurring in most translations 
which means that it could be considered a kind of translation universal. Gideon 
Toury supports this claim and says that “virtually no translation is completely 
devoid of formal equivalents, i.e., of manifestations of interlanguage” (Toury 
1978: 226). Most translations are, in some way, influenced by the language of 
the original text from which they are translated. The amount of interference 
depends on the proficiency of a translator; therefore, in translations done by 
students, interference is likely to occur with greater frequency. The following 
chapters will focus on different approaches towards interference and other 
concepts related to this phenomenon.