Issues in Translation of Linguistic Collocations

Abstract

Collocation is a term used to describe two-word combinations when there is a limited number of words thatmay precede or follow another word. There are many discussions about the term itself; therefore, the characteristicsand taxonomies of collocations are under debate. One of the accepted linguistic classifications ofcollocations is based on properties of collocations such as compositionality, modifiability, substitutability,and internal association (Lu & Xu, 2005, p.4). The aim of the paper was to analyse the characteristics oflinguistic collocations in English and their possible translation transformations in Lithuanian. The researchtargets four types of linguistic collocations: strong, loose, fixed and fully fixed. In the analysis, two maintypes of translation shifts are considered: level shift and category shift, further subdivided into several types.However, the majority of the analysed collocations undergo a category shift in the translation process. Theresults of the research indicate that the most common type of linguistic collocations in popular sciencetexts is strong collocations. Loose collocations account for one-third of the analysed instances. Fixed collocationsaccount for the third largest group and the least common group is fully fixed collocations.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.29.15056