Morpho-Syntactic Translations: An Error Analysis

Abstract

In a progressing world, English is hailed to be the language that connects people all over the globe. It is undeniable that English is used in many fields specially in education. Despite the wide use of English in the Philippines, several researches show that Filipino learners do not actually learn language skills specially morphology and syntax. In this regard, the researchers aimed to describe the morpho-syntactic translation errors and to describe the sources attributed to the translation errors. To analyze the translation errors, the researchers utilized the framework of Gass & Selinker (2008). Through the translation tests adapted from Langga & Alico (2020), the research revealed that the senior high school learners commit morphological errors such as inflection, adverb, verb tense, pluralization, infinitive, negation, articles, and demonstratives. Also, this study revealed that the participants committed syntactic errors such as subject-verb agreement and word order. Based on the errors, their sources were also analyzed. It was revealed that the source of errors can be attributed to both interlingual (transfer of morphological element, grammatical element, and lexico-semantic elements) and intralingual (addition, omission, ignorance of rule restriction, overgeneralization, and false analogy) interference. Based on the results, the researchers suggested that schools utilize translation as a means to remediate learners who are having difficulties in terms of morphology and syntax.