Despite our best intentions of avoiding language interference in our translations, it can sneak in when we drop our guard, because we’re all susceptible to absorbing and unwittingly reproducing linguistic and stylistic features of the language(s) we immerse ourselves in through our reading and listening. 

Expats like me who translate into our mother tongue are particularly at risk, as our immersion is total and prolonged. For decades, I’ve lived and worked in a country whose official language is a smaller language closely related to English and whose citizens routinely use English in their higher education, popular entertainment and commerce. 

Most of my work requires me to spot and rectify Dutch language interference in English texts, yet years ago I became aware that living in an English-language backwater was making it easy for Dutchisms to creep into my spoken and written English and into the English of colleague expat compatriots. The remedy has been to find out more about language interference and to use the resulting insights into the many possible transfers from one language to another to improve my editing and translation. 

So, I collect instances of language interference in non-native-English texts and try to identify the reasons for them. Using examples from my collection, in this presentation I’ll explore interference from various languages in English, aiming to expose generic forms of interference that will apply to any language combination and are therefore also relevant to translators not working with English. Some types of interference will be familiar to you, but there could be some surprises! 

Target audience: All translators!
Audience takeaway:  Awareness of the diversity of types of language interference.