By examining the translational behaviour of language learners, translation students and professionals, this paper seeks to contribute to the study of translational behaviour at various points of the developmental continuum. The main purpose of the study is to examine the frequency of low-level – phrasal – transcoding reflected by unwarranted transcoding at various levels of translational competence and to test Toury’s law of interference. It was found that the hypotheses were confirmed and that the results are in accordance with Toury’s law with regards to low-level linguistic structures.