Collocations from the perspective of translation studies 46

An adequate handling of collocations is a key component for an optimal translation (Newmark, 1988; Heid and Freibott, 1991; Munday, 2016). For translators, dictionaries are a valuable support tool to find suitable equiva-lents for the words found in the texts they translate. However, dictionaries do not include the collocations of a given language in a systematic way. As a consequence, the translator faces many challenges when finding an equiv-alent for these lexical units, even more so when translating specialized texts (Benson, 1985; Heid and Freibott, 1991).

Similar to collocations found in general texts, the equivalents of special-ized collocations also have an effect on the quality of a translation, as sug-gested by Oakes (1998, 159): “collocations tend to be specific to a domain sublanguage, and thus the collocations used in a sublanguage often have dif-ferent translations to those in general usage”. This implies that to attain accuracy a translator has to be aware of this type of lexical units depending on the subject field to which the translated text belongs. However, this is not easy because being a native speaker of a language does not necessarily entail that the translator has the competence to master the collocations that are typical of a particular domain. This view is supported by Baker (2011, 57), who argues that

Being a native speaker of a language does not automatically mean that the translator can assess the acceptability or typicality of register-specific collocations. This is largely why courses in specialized and technical language form an important component of translation train-ing syllabuses.

The challenge of correctly handling collocations when performing direct trans-lation, i.e. towards the translator’s mother tongue, is aggravated when deal-ing with inverse translation, that is, translatdeal-ing towards a non-mother tongue (Corpas and Seghiri, 2009). In this modality, if the translator does not have a ready-made equivalent, one that fully encompasses and expresses the same concept in the target language, especially when translating into a foreign language, he/she has to “guess” which is the right lexical unit to combine with another one. In this regard, Heid (2001, 788) asserts the following:

Collocational word combinations are a problem for translation be-cause, although many collocations of a foreign language are transpar-ent so far as understanding is concerned and do not cause trouble in translation into one’s mother tongue, it is impossible most of the time to “guess” the right word combinations when translating into a foreign language.

According to Heid, this happens in general as well as in specialized language, given the fact that collocations are not explicitly rule-governed but rather are to some extent a matter of convention.

Translators follow different strategies to translate collocations. Some of these strategies imply that the collocation is lost or “de-automatized” (Zulu-aga, 1998), that is, the semantic link between the two intervening lexemes is not kept, or simply the collocation is not understood as such by the transla-tor because she or he does not have the “phraseological competence” which for Corpas (2003) is still a pending subject for many translators.

Corpas (2003) labels these units as collocation translemes or translation units. She offers a classification of several cases that emerge in the translation of collocations:

1. Equivalent translation with idiosyncratic collocational feature: in this type of cases, only the base is translated independently from the col-locate, while for collocates the translation equivalents can only be de-scribed according to the base that has determined the collocates (Heid and Freibott, 1991). Corpas offers the example asignar recursos, ‘allo-cate resources’.

2. Undertranslation: this case emerges when in the target language there are no identical semantic features and therefore, when the collocation is translated, any of these aspects will be lost. For example torrente sangu´ıneo, ‘bloodstream’.

3. Overtranslation: this case is the opposite to the previous one; it means that the target language collocation may present absent semantic fea-tures in the source language.

4. when there is a change in the register between the source language col-location and its target language equivalent. Corpas offers the example ofc´alculos biliares, ‘gallstone disease’ which has a specialized equivalent in the field of medicine, litiasis biliar.

The above might bear consequences for translators, who could easily ig-nore the collocational pattern of the target language and carry out a literal translation of the components of a collocation, by using a calque term in-stead of the customary equivalent in the target language. For example, in a movie, when an actor says “straight jacket” the Spanish translation of the subtitles read “chaqueta r´ıgida”, rigid jacket. This suggests that the trans-lator was not aware of the phraseological relation between the two words.

Baker (2011) estimates that the translator should re-read the first version of a translated text a few hours later with the aim of carrying out a read-ing closer to the collocational pattern of the target language. This way, the translator may overcome the obstacles which could otherwise emerge under the influence of the source language, such as proposed by the law of inter-ference (Toury, 1995). For Baker, it is important to take into account the collocational meaning rather than doing a mere substitution of individual words with their dictionary equivalents. Baker (2011) argues that the task of identifying the collocational meaning is crucial at the first stage of trans-lation, when the translator is interpreting the source text. She also holds the view that the different collocational patterns between the source language and the target language are a source of potential trouble when carrying out a translation task and thus this calls for special attention from the translator.

2.10 Syntactic patterns of collocations

Several syntactic combinations frequently form collocations. In the view of Manning and Sch¨utze (1999), the two most frequent collocational patterns are those formed by Adjective + Noun and Noun + Noun. According to Maurer-Stroh (2004) many collocations are language-specific. Therefore, col-locational patterns vary across language pairs. Benson et al. (1986) present a classification of the different types of collocations based on the constituents that fall into this linguistic phenomenon. Heid (1999, 2001) offers a syn-tactic classification of the most frequent collocational patterns for several Indo-European languages according to the two lexical items that make up the collocation. These patterns are constituted by:

1. Noun + Verb 2. Noun + Adjective 3. Noun + Noun 4. Verb + Adverb 5. Adjective + Adverb.

According to Heid, the first three types are much more common in special-ized languages than the last two. He refers to this type of collocations as

“multiword terms”.

According to Koike (2001), Noun + Verb and Noun + Adjective are the most frequent collocations in Spanish. Koike offers a classification of simple and complex Spanish collocations. In his view, simple collocations are the ones formed by these patterns:

1. Noun + Verb

2. Verb + Noun (dependent clause) 3. Verb + Preposition + Noun 4. Noun + Adjective

5. Noun + Preposition (de) + Adjective 6. Verb + Adverb

7. Adverb + Adjective 8. Verb + Adjective.

For complex collocations, Koike proposes these patterns:

1. Verb + Noun phrase 2. Verb phrase + Noun 3. Noun + Adjectival phrase 4. Verb + Adverbial phrase 5. Adverbial phrase + Adjective.

Boss´e-Andrieu and Mareschal (1998a) provide a similar classification of mor-phosyntactic patterns valid for the formation of collocations in French.