Research into linguistic interference

 
4.2.6.  Miscellaneous 
And the last category I have established for the purpose of this research is 
the group concerning miscellaneous types of errors. At the beginning, I 
expected that this group will contain all the “unclassifiable” interferences which 
would not fit any of the groups defined above. Yet it sounds as a very vague 
group, it has turned out that it contains quite specific types of interferences. The 
only mistakes which “remained” unclassified were: the transcriptions of names 
according to the Czech norm and the type of interference which could also be 

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designated as pragmatic interference. By the term pragmatic interference we 
mean direct translation of cultural specific determinants. Basically, the examples 
which occurred in the corpus concerned the possessive pronoun our literally 
translated into Czech. The problem was that the students failed to realize the 
pragmatic function of the text; they transferred the linguistic aspect of the text 
but forgot for whom they were translating it.  
[…] powered the procreation of our native wildlife. – […] k rozmnožování naší 
volně žijících fauny. 
 
[…] templates for all the figures of our myths […]  – […] se staly modelem všech 
postav našich mýtů […] 
 
The first example is taken from the text dealing with native wildlife in New 
Zealand; and, in the second one, the pronoun our refers to British myths and 
legends. It means that it cannot be translated literally because it does not fit the 
context of the target cultural background; due to this element, the translation is 
out of place. 
The issue of proper names is the second type of occurrence which pertains 
to this group. First, it concerns Czech norms of women‟s surnames, and 
second, it includes the transcription of, in our case, Japanese names into 
Czech. In Czech, the suffix –ová (most often) is added at the end of women‟s 
surnames. As this does not apply to English, translators have to know the sex of 
a person mentioned in the original text and transcribe the name according to the 
norm mentioned. Nevertheless, students sometimes either decide to leave the 
name as it is in English (the first example in the following paragraph) or they 
often fail to carry out such a research and do not even realize that the people 
are women (the second example).   
 

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[...] Carol Craven told Danielle Yealands – […]  Carol Craven, například 
oznámila své pacientce Danielle Yealands […] 
 
Caporarel and Heyes have put forth a theory of anthropomorphism […]  – 
Caporarel a Heyes představili teorii antropomorfizace […] 
 
The following examples show the second type of occurrence as far as the 
norms of names transcription are concerned. All of these examples have been 
found in text C, in the discussion of the two Japanese scientists dealing with 
robotics.  
A Dialogue between Nobukazu Tajika and Noboru Kobayashi – rozhovor 
Nobukazu Tajiky a Noboru Kobayashiho 
 
in Tokyo – v Tokyu 
 
in Toyama Prefecture – v prefektuře Toyama 
 
 
According to the Czech norm, it would be correct to transcribe these names 
phonologically; i.e., Nobukazu Tadžika, Noboru Kobajaši, Tokio and Tojama. 
Eight out of ten people failed to transcribe the names of the two men and seven 
out of ten did not transcribe one of the two toponyms. 
To conclude, although this group of interference may sound vague, as an 
“interference waste basket”, it turned out that only few very specific examples 
fell into this group. This suggests that the groups presented above seem quite 
comprehensive and sufficient for determining the types of interference.  
 

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