1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

APPLYING ERROR ANALYSIS IN

TEACHING TRANSLATION
Assistant Lecturer. Whaj.M. Esmail
Al-Ma'mon University College
Department of Translation

ABSTRACT
Translation students tend to interfere their first language in the
process of writing in English when they are translating a given text.
Translation trainees commit errors while trying to perform the
different tasks assigned to them. These students' errors are
deviations from linguistic norms; and they can be seen at all levels of
language. There are errors of various types in trainees' translations
and to varied degrees. Errors are classified as either minor; if they
do not harm the content and communication, or major if they stand
in the way of communication.
The present paper aims at presenting a detailed account of errors
and error correction in translation as a technique for teaching
translation. To fulfill the aims, the study identifies a number of
errors committed by a sample of 10 students from Translation Dept.
/ Al-Ma'mon Univ. College.
Afterward, the researcher categorizes the errors according to the
following taxonomy: grammatical, lexical, semantic, and word order.
Understanding the linguistic differences between students' L1 and
English may help them to reduce the interference from their first
language.

Keywords: Error Analysis, Applications, Teaching Translation

‫العدد التاسع والعشرون ‪1027‬‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

‫تطبيق (تحليل الخطأ) في تدريس الترجمة‬

‫م‪.‬م‪ .‬وهاج منير أسماعيل‬
‫كلية المأمون الجامعة ‪ /‬قسم الترجمة‬

‫المستخلص ‪:‬‬
‫يميل طلبة الترجمة نحو االستعانة بلغتهم األم اثناء قيامهم بعملية ترجمة أي نص أنكليزي‬
‫يطالبون بترجمته‪ ،‬حيث يرتكب متدربو الترجمة وطلبتها اخطاءاً عديدة اثناء ترجمتهم‬
‫للنصوص المحددة لهم كواجبات صفية ‪ .‬هذه االخطاء المرتكبة هي انحراف عن قواعد لغوية‬
‫تحدث على كل مستويات اللغة ‪.‬‬
‫فهناك اخطاء عديدة ومتنوعة للطلبة في قسم الترجمة ‪ ،‬بعضها اخطاء صغرى اذا كانت ال‬
‫تعيق أو تؤذي التواصل والمحتوى ‪ ،‬وبخالفه تسمى اخطاءاً كبرى كونها تقف عائقا امام‬
‫طريقة توصيل المحتوى‪.‬‬
‫تهدف الدراسة الحالية إلى تقديم عرض مفصل عن اخطاء الطلبة وكيفية تصحيحها في‬
‫الترجمة وأتباع تحليل الخطأ كتقنية لتدريس الترجمة ‪ ،‬ومن أجل تحقيق هذا الغرض فقد قامت‬
‫الدراسة بتحديد مجموعة من اخطاء عينة مكونة من عشرة طلبة في قسم الترجمة ‪ /‬كلية‬
‫المأمون الجامعة‪.‬‬
‫بعدها صنف الباحث نوعية اخطاء الطلبة طبقا لتقسيمات نحوية ومعجمية وداللية وترتيب‬
‫للكلمات و استنتجت الدراسة الى ان فهم الطلبة لالختالفات بين اللغة األم واللغة االنكليزية قد‬
‫يساعدهم في تقليل التداخل الحاصل بين اللغتين ‪.‬‬

‫الكلمات المفتاحية ‪ :‬تحليل الخطأ ‪ ،‬تطبيقات ‪ ،‬تدريس الترجمة‪.‬‬

1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

SECTION ONE
THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF ERROR ANALYSIS

1.1. Introduction; a bird's eye-view

Errors are usually the outcome of competence deficiency
due to the incorrect storage of rules in the translation students'
minds. Errors are made either because the student does not
have appropriate knowledge or because he has some false
knowledge.
Wikipedia (2013) makes the point that linguists look at
the error translation students make as they translate into
another language and at their strategies for translating in the
new language at different degree of competence. In seeking to
understand what happens in the mind of the translator, applied
linguists recognize that motivation, attitude, learning style, and
personality affect how well a person learns to translate and
duly lead to the occurrence of errors.

1.2. Definition of Errors

Errors are studied in order to find out something about the
process of translating and about the strategies employed by
human beings translating into another language
(Lungu,2003:323).The term "error" was defined differently by
many experts .Two important definitions here are adequate to
reveal the errors in translating.
Norrish (1987:7) defines errors as "systematic deviation,
when learner has not learnt something and consistently gets
its wrong".
Cunningworth (1987:87) puts a second definition. He argues:"
error is a deviation in language norm and systematically
being understood". Thus, it is clear from these two definitions
that the key word is "systematic deviation" which can be
interpreted as the deviation that happens repeatedly in the
process of translation.
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

1.3. Errors Vs. Mistakes

It is necessary to make a distinction between the two
terms "errors" and "mistakes". James (1998:83) tries to
differentiate between them; an error is "a noticeable deviation
from the adult grammar of a native speaker reflects the
competence of the translator", while mistake refers to "a
performance error that is either random guess or a slip in
that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly". He
(Ibid) explained the nature of errors as "impossibility of
correction by the speaker himself" yet mistakes "are possible
if the deviation is pointed out to the speaker". Errors are
"systematic ", i.e. they occur repeatedly and not recognized by
the translator.
Richards et al. (1992:15) have put another distinction
between "errors and mistakes" in Dictionary of Language
Teaching and Applied Linguistics, it is mentioned that "a
translator makes mistakes when translating or interpreting,
because of lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, or some
other aspects of performance. Thus, mistakes can be self-
corrected when attention is called", while the term error can
linguistically be illustrated as "the use of a word in a way that
a native speaker may consider it as showing faulty or
incomplete learning". In other words, it occurs because the
learner does not know what is correct, and thus it cannot be
self-corrected. Therefore, this work will focus on errors, not
mistakes committed by the leaners.

1.4. Errors and Translation Pedagogy :

Errors play an important role in teaching how to translate
in the sense that translators find out, by committing
errors/mistakes, approaches to translate into foreign language
.However, they do go through many stages of failure in
translating.
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

The significance of errors corrections is stressed by many

scholars in the field of error analysis. Corder, for instance, in
his article (1967), remarks that errors are significant in three
different ways.
1- For a translation teacher, errors committed by students
inform him, if he undertakes a systematic analysis, how
far towards the goal the student of translation has
progressed and, consequently, what remains for him to
translate in a proper way. Added to that, teachers can
benefit from errors in revealing the extent of the
effectiveness of the teaching strategies and materials
whether they should continue teaching in the same way
or to adopt a different one. Errors show the teacher of
translation the places wherein students are weak and
need help so that they can devote more time to clarify
and re-explain such points.
2- Secondly, errors provide evidence to the research of
how language is learnt or acquired by translation and
what strategies or procedures the translator is employing
in his discovery of the language.
3- Thirdly, errors are indispensable to the translator
himself, because we can regard the making of errors as a
device the translator uses in order to learn (Corder,
1967:51). In the same context, Bell (1981:12) thinks that
errors are a sure sign that the translation student has not
mastered the code of the target language. In other word,
errors emphasize the fact that learners of translation
need more practice and attention in a specific area.
Errors make it clear to the teacher of translation that the
student / trainee needs more time and effort to try again
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

since he has not achieved his task to practice translation

in a professional way.

1.5 Sources of Errors in Translation :

The main reasons behind committing errors according to
Taylor (1975:73) and Brown (1987:109) are interlingual
transfer, intralingual transfer, in addition to the context of
learning the process of translating including both teaching
materials and teaching methods adopted by teachers.

1- Interlingual Transfer:
At the beginning of translating into a foreign language,
translators transfer items from their native language to the
foreign one. Such transfer can be either positive or negative.
Positive transfer leads to the facilitation of learning while
negative transfer leads to errors. To put it differently, in an
interlingual transfer, errors are ascribed to the first language.
There are interlingual errors when the learner's L1 habits
(patterns, systems or rules) interfere or prevent him/her
somehow from acquiring the patterns and rules of the second
language (Corder, 1971:161). Interference (negative transfer)
is the negative influence of the mother language on the
performance of the target language translator (Lado, 1964:13).

2- Intralingual Transfer:
Intralingual/Developmental errors belong to the language
being learned, independent of the native language. As such,
the foreign language can be sources of errors as translators
transfer negatively some rules within the foreign language, i.e.
they learn some new rules and then use them wrongly with
other different cases. According to Richards (1974:6): they
are some words used by the student translator which does not
reflect only the structure of the native tongue, but
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

generalizations based on partial exposure to the foreign

language. The student of translation, in this case, tries to
''derive the rules behind the data to which he/she has been
exposed, and may develop hypotheses that correspond neither
to the mother tongue nor to the target language''
The two preceding types of sources of errors are
linguistic ones. In other words, linguistic items, rules and
structures are transferred wrongly through a comparison that
translators believe that such a procedure is possible and
correct.

1.6. The Role of Translation Teacher

The Process of Error Correction:
Error correction is a form of feedback. It has been studied
thoroughly in recent years due to its importance in the field of
language and translation teaching.
Broughton (1980:71) in his book entitled "Teaching
English as a Foreign Language'' outlines a number of stages
for error correction. According to him, the first stage is to
establish what the error is. The second stage is to establish the
possible source of the error, to explain why it happened. It is
important to do this as a full knowledge of the causes of an
error enables the teacher to work in a more effective teaching
strategy to deal with it. The third stage is to decide how serious
the error is. The last stage, after establishing the area of the
error, is the correction.
Teachers should deal with the errors very cautiously;
everyone knows the feeling when a piece of written translation
comes back with red ink, and many students complain bitterly
of their teacher correcting their translations so often that they
no longer translate a single word of a given text to be
submitted to the teacher (Aboud,2009:13-14).
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

Immediate feedback is possible with regard to written as

well as oral work translations. However, it is always preferable
to avoid using too much red ink (ibid: 14).
Instead of writing the correct version and telling the
student to think about, the teacher might use a simple and self-
evident code: T- tense error; P-preposition error; V-
vocabulary error; etc… (ibid: 15).
Correction might also come from another source apart
from the student himself and the teacher, from another
member of the group work of translation, which provides other
alternatives. The alternatives seem to be more practical in the
sense that the student will not feel embarrassed. Hence, the
opinion of translation learners on error correction has been
attended to and duly studied in some detail (see Ridha,
2012:34).

SECTION TWO
ERROR ANALYSIS & TRANSLATION PEDAGOGY

2.1. Methodology ; Research Objective

The objective of the current study is to examine the errors
of the students of translation at Al-Ma'mon University
College, that they make during their translations and to
analyze the sources of these errors. Errors will be presented
and classified as follows: semantic, lexical, grammatical,
mechanical, and word order errors. The study, more
specifically, attempts to answer the following questions:-
1- Is negative transfer a cause of errors in the translations of
students?
2- What types of errors are common in the translations?

2.2. Limitation of the Study

1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

The data used for this research is derived from the

translations of 10 fourth year students at Al-Ma'mon
University College / Department of Translation. The data that
was collected came from papers being corrected by a teacher
of written translation in a monthly exam.

2.3. The Participants

The participants were ten students; 4th stage Iraqi students
from the Department of Translation, Al-Ma'mon University
College for the academic year 2016-2017. The subjects were
of the same age, rating from 20-22 years old, but factors such
as age or sex were not controlled in this study.
The participants were examined to translate one of the
three following different Arabic topics into English language:
[women rights ‫( حقوق النساء‬an argumentative essay), an
orphan story ‫( قصة يتيم‬a narrative essay), and the qualities of
a good neighbor ‫( مواصفات الجار الحسن‬a descriptive essay)].
The essays were ranged from one and a half to two single
spaced pages in length. The students did not know that their
renderings were to be subjected to analysis. The translated
texts were collected and analyzed to check various interlingual
errors.

2.4. Types of Translation Errors from Arabic into English

a) Grammatical Errors
Tense is the most prominent feature in the translations of
Iraqi students of Translation Dept. The translators committed
many grammatical errors for different reasons: they could not
write correct negative or interrogative sentences especially in
the simple present and simple past tenses because there is no
equivalent of auxiliaries (do, does and did) in Arabic:
*they was not speak frankly.
*is she come early.
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

* I was not go early.

It has also been noticed that the students tended to use or
add one of the different conjugated forms of the verb "to be" as
a filler with simple present and simple past tense forms , no
verb (be) in present and past tenses:
*The two girls faraway.
* they slaves.
*they very weaks and poors.
*He ill suddenly.
Simple present tense in Arabic covers meaning of simple
and progressive in English:
*She speaking now.
*They talking highly.
Such types of errors have a sort of transfer, which is
negative due to the lack of equivalence forms between foreign
language continuous, perfect and future tenses with those in
first language.
The study subjects resort to literal translation from Arabic
to determine whether certain words in English are singular or
plural. Words like 'information' and 'homework' have a plural
form in Arabic.
*The blind boy has eleven brother.
*I always ask him to help me in writing my homeworks
Using the appropriate preposition is one of the most
difficult tasks for translation learners, that is because in
English there are various prepositions that have the same
function. Thus, the trainees are not sure which preposition is
appropriate in a certain sentence.
* they were defense about the poor people.
*they were living from a small farm.
Articles are also misused by learners of translation. They
are unclear as such nouns are abstract and refer to attributes,
qualities, or ideas which are common in English without the
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

article ' the' to refer to that idea whereas in Arabic such

abstract words are preceded by indefinite article equivalent to
'the ' in English (Diab,1996:72).
* The success is a final aim of every human being.
Errors such as the omission or addition of those articles
are used in a way that proves the direct transfer of L1 rules to
L2 in translation specifically in the cases where names of
countries or cities were mentioned.

*My uncle travelled to the U.S.A before ten years

(addition of "the").
*I decided to depart at the 6 (addition of "the" )
*The two girls had uncle who is very harsh.(omission of
"an")
Moreover, pronouns are problematic in translation
because there are no exact equivalent counterparts in L1 or L2,
for instance, the pronoun 'it' as a neutral pronoun is not
available in Arabic. Thus 'he ' or 'she' is used by students for
inanimate objects or concepts.

b) Lexical/ Semantic Errors

On the level of this category, the lexical errors counted
were either a word or two words (e.g. collocation) or whole
phrases or sentences. Examples of lexical errors due to L1
transfer can be seen in the following examples:
* He started to learn me how….(teach )
*My brother travelled outside the country. (abroad)
*He didn't bear anything on his shoulders. (carry)
It is obvious that most of the errors are funny ones.
They occur when learners of translation translate directly
from L1 to convey their ideas in English. Another reason
for making such errors is the trainees' limited English
vocabulary.
c) Word Order Errors
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

Faulty word order is a common syntactic error that the

learners commit as a result of L1 transfer. Three categories are
included in the analysis: subject/ verb order, adjective/ noun
order and possessive adjective/ noun order. Students often
neglect the order that should be followed in English and came
up with constructions that are applicable in Arabic (L1) such
as (verb-subject – object):-
*was the accident a disaster
*causes he many problems
* imagine he everything.
In English, an adjective precedes the noun, whereas in
Arabic the adjective follows the noun and corresponds with it
in number and gender. These errors are due to the transfer of
this rule to L2. Possessive adjectives are added to nouns in L1.
* I read many books difficult
* They should follow three steps very important
* My friend did a lot of things good.

SECTION THREE
CONCLUSIONS & PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

1- Conclusions
1- Errors are usually the outcome of competence
deficiency owing to the incorrect storage of rules in the
translators' minds. Errors are committed either because
of the translator's inappropriate knowledge or because of
some false knowledge.
2- The analysis of student's translation performance
displays the very limited scope of the practical part of
grammar, conversation as well as listening
comprehension. It is; therefore, necessary to shed light
on the notions of 'error' and 'error analysis' to help the
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

students of translation overcome these errors within the

process of translation.
3- Error corrections should be provided with a detailed list
of the unacceptable errors made by translators/students,
attached to the performance.
4- Errors should be avoided and corrected by the teacher of
translation immediately whenever they occur.
5- Errors work as a source of feedback to both teacher and
students. As for teachers, they can identify the points of
difficulty to translation trainees. Students can also get
use from their mistakes as a remedial source for future
translation performances.

2- Pedagogical Implications
1- Students' errors have a considerable importance to
teachers of translation and syllabus designers. They help
instructors identify the problematic areas of students'
translations. They will be able to identify the nature of
the translator's knowledge at a certain stage in his/her
translation career.
2- Error analysis is a clear indication for instructors of
translation to outline the problems of translation
learning.
3- Such kind of researches based on the frequency of errors
will enable teachers of translation to teach the point of
error and to emphasize more on those areas where the
error is frequent.
4- Errors in translation provide feedback; they tell teachers
something about the effectiveness of his teaching
materials and teaching techniques and show him/her
1027 ‫العدد التاسع والعشرون‬ ‫مجلة كلية المأمون الجامعة‬

what parts of the curriculum have been inadequately

learned or taught and needed further attention. Errors are
important to Translation curriculum designers to see
what items are significant to be included in the courses
of teaching translation. The analysis of the students'
errors in translation can help to identify the linguistic
difficulties and the needs of second language learning at
a particular stage of competence.

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