Translation Transformations of Lexical Collocations

Abstract

Translation involves taking various aspects into consideration in different languages, and thus, a common problem for a translator is to find corresponding expressions in the target language (TL). Collocation in its linguistic sense is a relatively new phenomenon and its definition is not fully agreed on. Linguists define the notion of collocation variously: as a combination of words which usually appear together, a grouping of words in a sentence, a combination of words with certain mutual expectancy etc. Since syntactic or semantic features of separate elements of a collocation are unpredictable, the collocation can be easily misinterpreted in the process of translation. The article deals with translation transformations of lexical collocations achieved by translation shifts. The analysis indicates what translation transformations emerge in translating collocations to get the best translation equivalence in TL. The paper focuses on four most common types of lexical collocations: noun + noun, adj + noun, verb + noun and verb + adj + noun. 771 noun + noun, adj + noun, verb + noun and verb + adj + noun collocations have been selected from 81 article of social science magazines. The focus is on translation transformations of lexical collocations achieved by translation shifts.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.20.1191