Research Paper
Year: 2023 | Month: June | Volume: 10 | Issue: 6 | Pages: 39-51
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20230607
Cases of Syntactic Interference in Students’ translations between English and Azerbaijani
Kamala Avadır Jafarova
School of Education, Department of Linguoculturology, Azerbaijan University of Languages, Baku/Azerbaijan
ABSTRACT
By definition, translation requires the knowledge of at least two languages: a native and a foreign language. Depending on the extent to which a person knows a language, we can distinguish symmetrical and asymmetrical, autonomous and combined bilingualism. Particularly important in the case of translation asymmetric bilingualism – when one language is known to a greater extent, and combined bilingualism – when speech is built based on the native language. The aim of this article is to identify syntactic errors in the English translations of Azerbaijani students and find solutions to them. We will therefore primarily consider negative syntactic interference since it is the negative transfer that creates noticeable difficulties for translation. In translation, interference is expressed by a violation of the syntactic norms and rules of the studied foreign language under the influence of the transfer of skills and abilities of the native language. Students often make this mistake when harmonising the grammatical units of one language in accordance with the grammatical structures of another, or when they do not follow a certain rule in one language due to its absence in another.
Syntactic interference describes violations in terms of typological differences and functioning. In order to establish interference, it is necessary to consider the features of each of the interacting languages. Comparative analysis of English and Azerbaijani languages helps to compare and see the main inconsistencies in the two language systems, to find the main errors in the foreign language speech of Azerbaijan-speaking students. For this purpose, the students were offered two types of tasks: translation from Azerbaijani into English and vice versa. A study of the students’ translations showed that the most typical errors are errors at the level of the sentence structure.
Keywords: syntactic interference, comparative analysis, English-Azerbaijani languages, typological differences, typical errors .
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