A Linguistic Analysis of Translation Errors Made by ESL Engineering Students at the University of Larkano, Sindh

Abstract

The current study examined the translation errors that occurred in the translation of the sentences by ESL engineering students of the University of Larkano. The primary aims of the study were to find out the most frequent errors in translation by students, to categorize these errors linguistically and to recommend a translation approach for developing students' translation competence. The research method in this study was qualitative research design and the Error Analysis Framework was used by Corder. Data was collected by a translation task where 15 Urdu sentences were given to students and asked them to translate them into English. Collected translations were thoroughly studied to determine the grammatical, lexical, syntactic and semantic errors. The findings indicated that students frequently made errors in verb forms, subject-verb agreement, word choice, sentence structure and word meaning. The findings also showed high degree of mother-tongue influence and Urdu-to-English word for word translation. The researcher found that training in grammar and vocabulary, practice in writing sentences, translation based on background reading, and teacher feedback can help ESL engineering students improve their translation accuracy.

Keywords: Translation errors, ESL students, Engineering students, Error analysis, Urdu-English translation.