Collocation is a pair or group of words that are often use together docx TRANSLATION STRATEGIES COLLOCATIONS TRANSLATION COURSE Hue University College of Foreign Languages I OVERVIEW OF COLLOCATIONS 1.
TRANSLATION STRATEGIES - COLLOCATIONS TRANSLATION COURSE Hue University College of Foreign Languages I OVERVIEW OF COLLOCATIONS Definition A collocation is two or more words that often go together These combinations just sound "right" to native English speakers, who use them all the time On the other hand, other combinations may be unnatural and just sound "wrong" For example, in natural English, people say the fast train or fast food and the quick train, quick food are unnatural Sometimes, a pair of words may not be absolutely wrong and students will understand what it meant, but it may not be the natural, normal collocation For example: When we say: “ She has got yellow hair”, the others can understand but a fluent speaker of English would probably say: “ She has got blonde hair” Students who learn English have to make a special effort to learn collocations because they are often difficult to guess The difficulty level of collocations depends largely on the use of primary and non-primary sense of the component words Collocations in which the words are used in their primary sense are easily understood and translated Because there is no logic in word combinations, the only way a second language learner can handle collocation is by studying them to become more familiar with them as native speakers Learning collocations brings to us a lot of benefits, especially for translators First of all, we can understand the meaning of the word combinations in primary and second meanings Secondly, we will not suffer from grammatical errors when using the word We usually make errors because some combinations are allowed in your native tongue, but not in the target language Moreover, we can express our ideas better We can use a lot of different combinations, enrich our expression and enhance writing sophistication and avoid simple, boring, repetitive writing style Therefore, learning collocations is an efficient method to develop your language proficiency Types of collocations a Adjective + noun collocations e.g: strong wind, heavy rain b Verb + noun collocations e.g : answer the phone, take messages c Verb + adverb collocations e.g: failed miserably d Noun + noun collocations e.g: a lick of paint, a team of experts e Noun + of + noun e.g: loss of memory, the court of appeal f Noun + and + noun e.g : food and drinks, heart and soul g Adverb + adjective collocations e.g: widely available, bitterly cold h Noun + verb collocation ( names of sound) e.g : dogs bark, bees buzz, cats meow i Prepositional collocations - Noun + preposition collocations e.g : take part in, the reason for - Preposition + noun collocations e.g : in danger, on fire - Adjective + preposition collocations e.g : afraid of, angry with - Verb + preposition collocations e.g : agree with, apologize to In addition to the aforementioned types of collocation, collocations are also divided into three categories - Strong collocation: is one in which the words are very closely associated with each other For example, “auburn” only collocated with words connected with hair ( e.g curls, tresses, locks ), “ adjourn” is very strongly associated with “ meeting” and “ trial” - Fixed collocations: are collocations so strong that they cannot be changed in any way For example, you say I was walking to and fro ( I was walking in one direction and then in opposite direction, repeat number of times) No other words can replace to or for or and in this collocation It is completely fixed The meaning of some fixed collocations cannot be guessed from the individual words These collocations are called idioms - Weak collocation: are made up words that collocate with a wide range of other words For example: the word “make” can collocate with many words : make a mistake, make money, make sure II PROBLEMS THAT TRANSLATORS HAVE TO DEAL WHEN TRANSLATE COLLOCATIONS Because collocations are combinations that just sound "right" to native English speakers, who use them all the time, so it is not easy to translate a collocation into other languages, especially for non - native speakers They may be hampered due to non- equivalent collocations and cultural barriers and other problems A difficult problem in translation collocation which translators usually face is finding proper target language equivalent collocation According to Armstrong (2005: 98) “ the difficulty for translators is not so much to recognize a source collocation as to find an acceptable target language equivalent” For examples, in English, people can use the word "black" with many animals to describe their colors But when translated into Vietnamese, translators need to be careful because each animal has different description of the word " black" They are also can be called Vietnamese collocations We can call a black cat is “ mèo đen” but also “mèo mun”, but a black horse is called “ ngựa ô” or a black dog is called “ chó mực” In this case, all these words refer to black color People can understand what are “ ngựa đen” and “ chó đen” but they not seem to be naturally There are many reasons to explain this First, Vietnamese is under the influence of Chinese, the word " ô" in Chinese has the meaning "black" Vietnamese people also often call the color by name of the objects which have similar colors They call "con mèo mun" because it has a color like the ebony color and they call " chó mực" because it has color of ink These are old collocations, which are still using , aim to enrich the Vietnamese vocabulary Dealing with culture-bound collocations is an important issue in translation According to Barker ( Barker 1992: 59-61): “Some collocations reflect the cultural setting in which they occur If the cultural setting of the source and target languages are significantly different, there will be instances when the source text will contain collocations which convey what to the target reader would be unfamiliar associations of ideas Such culture-specific collocations express ideas previously unexpressed in the target language Like culture-specific words, they point to concepts which are not easily accessible to the target reader […].” For example, when translate collocations “dry wine” and “sweet wine”, if the translators are not knowledgeable about the culinary culture they can mistranslated For cultures where wine is consumed often, dry wine is the only wine used with meals and sweet wine is used only as desserts wine If they are translated " rượu khô" and " rượu ngọt", the meanings of words will be lost Another example, we cannot find out corresponding form for the English collocation “happy hour” in Vietnamese “ Happy hour” is a period in a bar from about 5-7 pm when drinks are sold at reduced prices in a bar or other licensed establishment It belongs to American culture, which started in the US Navy in the 1920s Translators also can make the same mistake when translate collocation “ hard drink” “ Hard drink” is an alcoholic beverage that is distilled rather than fermented In Western culture, this collocation was used to refer to kinds of liquor as volka, tequila or whiskey, it does not include other alcoholic drinks such as beer However, many translators can mistranslated because of the lack of background knowledge Therefore, background knowledge is very important to translate this collocation Translators also have difficulty when a word collocates with another word because it may have a secondary meaning which is different from its primary one, and usually cannot be translated word-for-word into the receptor or target language For instance, with the words "dry" which means in isolation" free from water", we can collocate with many words However, in many other combinations, dry does not mean" free from water " : dry voice (cold voice, in the sense it does not express emotion), dry cow (a cow that does not yield milk) or dry bread (bread served alone without butter or jam) Because of its various meanings, it can deceive a translator in transferring into the receptor language if he is not able to recognize the pattern collocations with a secondary meaning that is different from the meaning of its individual element Translators may encounter some trouble in translating collocations in the number of animals In Vietnamese, we only use the words "đàn" or " bầy" to talk about the number of all animals, such as đàn kiến, đàn ong, đàn hổ Meanwhile in English, each species will collocate with each word , such as a pride of tiger, a colony of ants, a swarm of bees Therefore, this problem is often encountered when translated from Vietnamese into English These are the common problems in translation when a translator is unfamiliar with the concept of collocations They will most likely attempt to translate literally from their native language, which results in making mistakes To be able to solve these troubles, translators need to find appropriate strategies in translating collocations III STRATEGIES TO TRANSLATE COLLOCATIONS Translators have many problems in translating a collocation to another language The main reason may be due to the specific local cultural elements in collocations or collocations that have no equivalent in the target language This creates difficulties in the translation process with the aim of translating a language into another language naturally Therefore, to overcome this problem, we need to use some strategies to make translating collocations easier Barker (1992: 48) suggests that: " patterns of collocations are largely arbitrary and independent of meaning This is so both within and across languages The same degree of mismatch that can be observed when comparing the collocational patterns of synonyms and near-synonyms within the same languages is evident in the collocational patterning of " dictionary equivalent or near equivalents' in two languages" Translators can use the same meaning and form collocation For example: English: I go jogging every morning Learning to ride a motorbike is very easy Vietnamese: Tôi vào buổi sáng Tập lái xe máy dễ In this case, “ go jogging” and “ bộ”; “ride a motorbike” and “ lái xe máy” have the same meaning and the same form Sometimes, they need to translate by using collocations of the same meaning but different form For examples: English: Mary has a hen and a cock Vietnamese: Mary có gà mái gà trống Do not: Mary có gà gà đực “Gà mái” and “gà trống” are two Vietnamese collocations that describe gender of chickens Also, “ drink like a fish” cannot be translated “ uống cá” into Vietnamese because this translation unnatural It must be translated “ uống nhiều” In case equivalents in target language cannot be found, paraphrasing may be the best way to deal with collocation In this strategy, students produced alternative versions of translation by means of definitions, examples and descriptions, without changing the meaning of the original For Vietnamese collocation “ gà trống thiến”, there is no equivalent collocation in English This collocation often appears in folklore, deriving from the worship tradition of Vietnamese Thus, to translate this collocation, translators need to explain , describe or annotate what is “ gà trống thiến” because for those who not understand Vietnamese culture, they will not know what this collocation means Another strategy to deal with collocation is translating by omission This strategy could be used when we translate collocation literal or unnatural translation IV CONCLUSION Socio-linguistic and cultural aspects play an important role in collocation translation To have a good translation, the important step is that you have to recognize collocation to decide which strategy to use If you select the appropriate method, you will translate better, more natural without losing its meaning In addition, translators should also have knowledge, understanding by continually learning about collocations and how to use them Lastly, Translator must have a deep knowledge on both source language and target language so as to understand the connotative meanings of collocations of the source language and then to recreate their exact counterparts in the target language REFERENCES http://www.ozdic.com/collocation-dictionary/holiday http://www.myenglishteacher.eu/blog/5-most-common-adjective-noun-collocations-expre ss-chilly-rich-heavy-strong/ http://sv-etc.nl/collocations.pdf http://books.google.com.vn/books?id=S8LQZ1-luZsC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=very+fix ed+collocations&source=bl&ots=IRK89gwSzx&sig=qqO-gN6vMmb2-1lU8jLSZv6VkI U&hl=vi&sa=X&ei=K9idUp-kFsTJiAfUlYDQCg&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAjgK#v=onepage &q=very%20fixed%20collocations&f=false http://www.umc.edu.dz/theses/anglais/FAN1152.pdf http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/J/J96/J96-1001.pdf http://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2010/v55/n3/045065ar.html http://www.umc.edu.dz/theses/anglais/BOU1142.pdf http://www.iasj.net/iasj?func=fulltext&aId=10787 http://www.umc.edu.dz/theses/anglais/BOU1142.pdf