Languages in Confrontation

Abstract

This paper focuses on the translation problems that arise when the two languages involved are German as the source language and English as the target language. In the past years, linguists began to notice that certain mistakes tended to re-occur systematically when a foreign language was being taught to learners with the same native language. Very often, they could recognise that the patterns and structures of the native language were simply being transferred to the foreign language: learners were allowing their mother tongue to fill in any gaps in their knowledge. Research into this phenomenon is given the name of contrastive analysis. Here we draw on the findings of contrastive analysis and on our own experience as teachers and translators to deal selectively with those items of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax which are likely to cause the biggest headaches to the learner.