Research into linguistic interference

TOTAL 
82 
61 
59 
84 
Table 10: Grammatical interference, borderline cases, interference in typography and 
miscellaneous (The numbers in brackets stand for the number of students translating the text) 
 
The occurrence of miscellaneous types and interference in typography is 
considerably high in texts B and C. Definitely, in these cases, the text influenced 
the results because it contained several occasions for interference of this type. 
It is evident, though, that most of the students were unable to avoid such 

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influence. We have already discussed the concrete instances in chapters 4.2.5 
and 4.2.6, and we mentioned the fact that, for example, if a name or a 
typographical feature appeared in the original, most of the students got easily 
influenced by the source text aspect. In other words, to a certain degree, the 
occurrence of these types of interference depends on the actual amount of 
passages in the source text which provide an occasion for the manifestation of 
such interferences in the target. On the other hand, text D does not contain any 
example of miscellaneous types of interferences because neither names nor 
cultural specific elements appear in the original text. And in text F, only one 
instance of interference in typography was found (a dash remained in the 
translation although it did not fit the structure).  
An extremely high number of grammatical interferences has been found in 
text A. If we look at the concrete examples, the passages in which grammatical 
problems occur coincide in most of the students‟ translations. The source text 
probably influenced the translator to such a degree that he/she caused 
interference on this level and, obviously, most of the students did not even 
realize that there was a problem in their translations. Text F, on the other hand, 
does not seem to cause troubles for the students – only 4 grammatical 
interferences occurred. In the other texts, grammatical interferences manifest 
quite evenly; the average occurrence ranges from 0.5 to 1.3.  
Although the main tendencies are obvious, the style of the concrete text 
definitely influences the end result. Of course, it would be optimal to find six 
texts which would be equal as far as the features of the text are concerned (the 
amount of passages which would provide an occasion for the occurrence of the 

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69 
given types). Nevertheless, even the texts available to us are sufficient to detect 
the main tendencies and to evaluate interferences in students‟ translations.  
It is also interesting to see how the occurrence of borderline cases reflects in 
the overall proportion of all the interferential types. As we have already 
mentioned, the borderline cases contain examples which are primarily 
influenced by the source text but which are already halfway to perfection. 
Although it is quite difficult to state what examples pertain to borderline cases, I 
tried to assess these quite rigorously so that the results would be valid and 
significant. The average occurrence ranges from 0.3 to 1.6 for the individual 
texts and the manifestation is fairly balanced. No significant variations have 
been found in the students‟ translations.  
Generally speaking, we have observed that, in many cases, the mistakes 
due to interference have reoccurred in translations of more students. Passages 
where potential interference may occur are sometimes quite easily identifiable.