Research into linguistic interference

2
 – *House of Culture (cultural centre), oblíbeným cílem turistů – *a 
favourite aim for tourists (a favourite destination for visitors). The second 
subcategory, exact syntactic equivalence in lexical interference, causes 
interferences similar to Thorovský‟s interference in collocation or semantic 
interference (these two partially overlap). The most common examples of this 
type are cases in which a Czech single word needs to be expressed by several 
words in English; but, the translator fails to do this and attempts to find single-
word translation which is not correct (e.g. nejbližší okolí města – *the nearest 
town environs (the area immediately around the town). 
                                                 
2
 Examples taken from Hopkinson‟s paper: Hopkinson, Christopher (2007) “Factors in Linguistic 
Interference: A Casestudy in Translation”. SKASE: Journal of Translation and Interpretation, 2 
(1). Ostrava.  

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The second factor influencing the occurrence of interference is what 
Hopkinson calls generalisation from false hypotheses.  
“In this process, translators make incorrect generalisations from their own 
false hypotheses of the relations between linguistic systems in Czech 
and English. This factor plays a key role in generating interference at the 
lexical level and in word-formation. Translators frequently search for 
regularity in translation processes where no such regularity actually 
exists, and they (probably unconsciously) create hypotheses governing 
such processes which they then apply in unsuitable situations” 
(Hopkinson 2007: 17). 
 
Clearly enough, the first subcategory, lexical generalisation: false cognates, 
generates mistakes similar to surface lexical interference, as denominated by 
Thorovský. Hopkinson gives examples such as největší kulturní dům v