Translating Lexical Collocations. The case of the translation into Albanian of the Portrait of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
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ISMAIL QEMALI UNIVERSITYCOLLEGE OF HUMAN SCIENCES
FOREIGN LANGUAGES DEPARTMENTMASTER OF SCIENCES IN TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION
Master s Diploma Thesis
Translating lexical collocations. The case of the translation into Albanian of the Portrait of Dorian Gray,
by Oscar Wilde.
A work done by
Denada Shehaj
A thesis proposal submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF SCIENCES IN TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION
Approved by Dr. Alketa Pema, thesis adviser
September, 2014
Declaration of AuthorshipI declare that I have worked on this thesis on my own and that every kind of
information that is used is clearly cited
Acknowledgements
At first I would like to thank my thesis supervisor,
Dr.Alketa Pema for her precious guidance, support,
substantial suggestions and encouragement. She is for me not
only a great
teacher but rather a wonderful person who accepted me without
any condition.
I am grateful to my family for their support and patience
during all my years of study.
Thank you my God for leading me, helping me and for having
been there every time I needded you.You gave me
strength,volition, nerves, energy,courage and pleasure.
I would also like to thank all of my friends that helped
me with material and every kind of help I needed.You have
been an encouragement to me
Table of Contents
Declaration of Authorship ------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement ------------------------------------------------------------ Abstract -------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Introduction 1.1 Aims and roles of collocations ---------------------------------------------------------- 1.2 Recognition and importance of collocations--------------------------------------- 1.3 Characteristics of collocations………………………………………………. 1.4 Limitations to the study…………………………………………………..
2 Types of Collocations 2.1Definitions of Collocations-------------------------------------------------------------- 2.2 Difficulties and Problems in translating collocations--------------------------- 2.3Distinction between collocations and idioms------------------------------------------- 2.4 Lexical and Grammatical collocations-------------------------------------------------------
3 Collocations and Literary Text 3.1 Translation---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.2 Translation of collocations ---------------------------------------- 3.3 Translation of literary texts-------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.4 Translation of collocations in literary texts---------------------------------------------- 3.5 Strategies in translating collocations in literary text----------------------------------------
4 Methodology 4.1 Introduction------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.2 Materials 4.3 Methodology---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.4 Examples of lexical collocations /the sample---------------------------------------------- 4.5 Analysis of the results---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conclusions and recomendations---------------------------------------------------- Bibliography ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Appendix ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abstract
Collocation is considered one of the major `trouble spots' for
translators. This may be assigned to the difficulty in
anticipating the constituent elements of a collocation, the
considerable variation in collocability across languages and the
lack of suitable resources on collocation. However, few empirical
studies have been made so far on the types of collocations that
are particularly problematic to the translator, the specific
sources of the problem and the procedures that translators refer
in handling such collocations.
The present study aims at investigating the translation of English
lexical collocation into Albaninan and analyzing lexical
collocations in a given literary text, to show differences and
similarities in bringing together the two text the ST and TT. Also
it takes into account the frequency of occurrence and translation
strategies. I have chosen the distinguished literary work of Oscar
Wilde " The portrait of Dorian Gray" and two Albanian translations
of it. It is important to see how collocations of English are
translated by different translators in two different translated
versions. A set of collocations are selected to be translated and
analyzed basically the patterns adjective + noun" verb + noun;
adverb + adjective" and noun + noun, in a literary text which are
the basic combination in translation process. It is important to
pay attention to the phenomenon of collocations and to what
extent the frequency of lexical collocation is because they
constitute an important and vital aspect of productive
vocabulary. It's of great importance to stress the necessity that
all Second language learners as well as translators and
interpreters have in recognizing and properly translating this
language phenomenon known as collocation.
Keywords: collocation,lexical, translation, context, arbitrary, combinability,
transparency, cohesiveness.
.
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Aims of the study.
Collocations are a fascinating linguistic phenomenon in language
in general and in translation in particular. They are repeated
combinations of words whose co-occurrence is higher than chance.
They are usually used spontaneously in people’s speech as unmarked
collocations, whereas the marked ones carry out the creative
element, and thus are used a lot in literary texts. Collocation
is a lexical relation between words that are possible to combine
usually with certain other words to form a semantic unit. This
combination does not depend on rules but to certain constrains
that determine the way they can be combined to convey meaning.
The meaning gained from collocations is not simply a matter of
associating ideas but as Palmer says is "idiosycratic" and cannot
be predictable of the meaning of the other words. Many linguists
have acknowledged the significant role collocations play when
applied appropriately and functionally in the process of foreign
language learning and translation Abu Ssyadeh (2007).
According to Oxford Collocation Dictionary (2002:Vii), collocations run
through the whole of English language and no piece of natural
spoken or written English is totally free of collocations. For
English learners choosing the right collocation make their speech
and writing sound more natural. Hence collocations are essential
to the process of vocabulary development and are deeply embedded
within a language. Researchers believe that there is a great need
to give careful attention to collocations in specialized fields of
knowledge. Helena Halmari (2004, 202) says that "we use words
together with other words without imagining that we are making
unconscious choices of what combinations go well together and
since they are used as combinations, they are potential conveyer
of culture or of a certain ideology". As we have to deal with the
translation of collocations it is very important to have some
basic and good knowledge in the translation process itself.
Translators should have enough competence, which can be defined as
one's knowledge of language and ability to use it.
Translating collocations is an eternal struggle for English
Learners because it is very difficult to match the proper noun
with the proper verb or noun. As individual words, collocation
patterns carry meaning and can be culture specific, adding here
their arbitrary nature which leads to considerable problems in
translation. In a more particular way collocation is a famous
component of a native speaker knowledge of the language
(Howarth,1993). Many collocations are sometimes misrepresented to
the target audience due to a failure to recognize their
linguistic, stylistic, and cultural aspects. Therefore, in this
thesis is investigated the importance of the translation of
collocations in literary texts.
The aim of the research is to explain how lexical collocations
are translated when transferred into the target language, and
whether the target text (TT) has met the linguistic and the
stylistic characteristics of the collocations or not. It aims at
identifying, classifying and analysing lexical collocations. As a
result, three questions will be investigated:
What happens to collocations when they are translated?
How do translators deal with collocations?
What strategies do they adopt in translating collocations in
literary texts?
Which type of lexical collocations under the study is most
used (The frequency of lexical collocations).
This study is significant because answering these questions will
prove a repeated phenomenon within the translation process and
the translators’ methods in dealing with this aspect of language
in a particular genre.
Chapter One presents a short introduction about collocations
including the aims of the study, and the research questions. It
stresses the importance of collocations and how can they be
recognized in a text.What are some of the difficulties and
problems that collocations bear in translation and what are the
limitations for this research. At last some key words that are
embeded in the entire work are provided.
Chapter Two provides a background information of what collocations
are and how different scholars have defined the term.Which are two
most important types of collocations, their classification and
some basic characteristics of them.
Chapter Three reviews the translation as a process of rendering
one language into another,then it focuses in the translation of
the collocations. As we are dealing with a literary text it is
necessary to put some information about the translation of
literary text and then the translation of collocations in a
literary text.Finally we are going to see some strategies in the
translation of collocations.
Chapter Four deals with methodology. It presents an introduction
about the work in study and a lot of lexical examples that are
elected from the translated books under the study. The founded
samples are ilustrated in tables and further analysed.At the end
some conclusions are provided based on the reserch.
1.2 Recognizing collocations and their importance
Recognition
Sometimes we find it difficult to decide what a collocation is and
what is not, but Schutze offers two possible solutions.
One is to count of their frequency in a text. If two or more
words occur together in a great amount there is obvious that
they have a special function that is as consequence of their
combinations.
The other way is by translating the collocation in the TL. If
we cannot translate the combination word for word then we are
dealing with a collocation
It is well known that the translators as well as students that
master an English language pose difficulty in translating
collocations. According to the research done in this area this
was due to the unfamiliarity with English language and culture.
This inability to master English language puts them into
difficulty in translating a text correctly. So it should be
teachers duty to draw students attention to improve collocational
competence in order to be aware of the phenomenon and to be able
to overcome difficulties they came across with when translating
collocations.
A translator must be very familiar and should recognize
collocations in a given text even though they find difficulties
because of the varying types that can be found. Collocations can
be found in any type of text and everywhere, so first translators
should have great competence in foreign language in order to use
and produce appropriate collocations. We cannot say that the
combination of words is strict to the rules but it has some
restrictions on how they are combined to convey meaning. According
to Schutz (1999:142) the most important role of collocations is
the generation of natural language. So, collocations make
language more precise, rich and appealing. Hill (2000) regards
collocation as an "important key to fluency" (p.55) and states
that the density of unrecognized collocations not that of the new words
makes listening and reading in a foreign language difficult,
whereas collocation competence would allow students to read more
widely, understand more quickly and speak more fluently.
The inability of learners to recognize a collocation as a whole
combination is different from the meaning of its individual
elements. For example the meaning of dry depends on its collocate
which is different from the meaning of it in isolation as in: dry
cow, dry bread, dry voice, dry book, dry humor etc. One may fail to recognize
the meaning of dry in combination with voice and may mistranslate it
which is not moist, while it means cold in the sense of not
expressing emotion. Thus in translation is crucial to pay
attention to the collocational meaning rather than substituting
individual words from their dictionary elements (Baker1992:53).
The recognition of a collocation is important in the process of
translation because when a word collocates with another word it
may have secondary meaning which is different from its primary one
and cannot be translated in word for word into the TL. Take for an
example the expression of dry. When the word dry is said in isolation,
its primary meaning will be something that is not wet or moist.
But if it co-occurs with the expression of cow as in dry cow, and
the word voice as in dry voice, the meaning has nothing to do with not
wet or moist. The former means a cow which does not produce milk, and
the latter refers to a voice which is dull or cold and does not
express any emotion. The obstacle in recognizing them may be due
to the fact of considerable meanings displayed by the secondary
meaning of collocation. Because of its various meaning, it can
deceive the translator in transferring into the receptor language.
If the expression is heard often the words become sticked together
in our minds.[ladies and gentleman]. It appears in that order because it
is a collocation, it always stand in that order and to put them
the other way around seems wrong.
Importance of collocations in language
Collocations play an essential role in language. They are its
beautiful part as they play an important role in the coherence of
the structure of a language (Ghazala, 1995:130). Manning and
schutz (1999:142) maintain the important role of collocations in
the generation of natural language. Oxford collocations Dictionary
stresses: " Collocation is the way words combine in a language to
produce natural sounding speech and writing" (2002:7) it continues
with the definition that " Language that is collocationaly rich is
more precise, so collocations make language more precise, reach
and attractive and this precision is conditioned by the context,
by the words that surround and combine with the core word, and by
the collocation" (2002:9), this is one function of the
collocation, another function is the communicative aspect. If we
will be able to use the nouns with the proper verbs, the proper
adjectives with proper nouns it will improve linguistic competence
and people will be able to talk about any subject and communicate
effectively (Saricas,2006:36).
Ghazala shows that collocations have stylistic functions and have
to be taken into consideration when translating them, and that the
aesthetic function is the most important stylistic function of
collocations. The more knowledge we have of collocations the more
competent we are in the use of language. A grammatically correct
sentence will be distinguished as difficult if the collocation
preferences are broken. This makes collocation an interesting area
for language teaching. Hill (2000) regards collocations an
important key to fluency and the more unrecogized collocations are
the more difficult it makes reading and listening task.
Collocations can indicate one s competence in a language, they
allow students to read more widely, to understand more quickly and
speak more fluently. Fluency according to Lewis is based on the
acquisition of a large storage of items which are key element in
the foundation of any linguistic novelty or creativity. Bolinger
(1985:69) gives a warning to us saying that: " a speaker who does
not command this collection, does not know the language". A lot of
previous studies have discussed collocations and its significance.
The use and learning of collocations seems very important for any
second language learner who will be able to use English at an
academic setting. If you want to become fluent, the use of
collocations is crucial but not only.
Lewis,(1997:15) Porto,(1998) Wei,(1999), Oxford collocations
dictionary(2002:Vii), and Mc Carthy O Dell (2005:6) state that the
productivity of collocations insure the mental lexicon with a wide
range of English words combinations which lead to the growth of
accuracy and fluency. Another important role of collocations
stated by Hatim and Mason is that they are considered "crucial in
creating lexical cohesion" (1997, p.47) They stated that the more
frequent the collocational pattern the more cohesive will the text
be. Lewis indicates that language consists of chunks that produce
coherent text when they are combined. Nadja in his collocations learning
corpus(2005) stresses the major role that collocations play in
language processing and use. He notes also their role in
supporting comprehension and language learning because they help
in the development of creative language.
Newmark (1988) highlights the importance of collocations for
written text. He says "if grammar is the bones of a text,
collocations are the nerves, more sensitive, multiple and specific
in indicating the meaning". Furthermore he points that it is the
collocation that adds comprehension to words in a text. fex: The
noun affect the sense of its adjective as in (pretty sight). He claims
that the most powerful contextual influence on words is the
collocation (1991, p.91). This claim was reinforced and supported
by Baker who states that "what a word means often depends on its
association with certain collocates" (p.539).
According to Hill collocation is an important feature of all such
texts although each text has its own collocational
characteristics. A definite reason why collocations are important
is because the way words may combine in collocations is basic to
all language use (Lewis 53). The other argument is that
collocations occur in language so often that it is not possible
to ignore them. Linguists like Newmark (1988) and Abu- Ssyadeh
(2007), consider collocations as "nerves of the text and lexis is
the flash" (p. 213). Also a central role is played by collocations
in the process of foreign language learning and translation, Abu-
Ssyadeh (2007, p. 70). Language is one of the great powers. The
diversity of human language along with its complex special
features is actually the only property of human race ( Surat
ArRum,22). As the linguistic is the direct study of human language
and ought to discover the universals concerning by describing and
explaining it, the study of human errors in the domain of language
is a major component of a core linguistic. The importance of
collocations in language as well as in translation has been given
a priority. As They play a vital role in language they have
attracted the interest of linguists in their translation. The
production and use of the proper collocations indicates language
proficiency and so their association play a vital role organizing
the relations within a text, wherefore they are crucial to the
interpretations of a text.(Halliday & Hasan, 1976, p. 287).
1.3 Characteristics of collocations
Collocations as many other translations problems should be taken
into account by translators. They are challenging when it comes to
the translation process. They follow the pattern of two words that
can be formed by either a noun + noun , adjective + noun, adverb
+ adjective, verb + noun etc. Two words together each of one with
different meanings are combined in such a way to give one
meaning; as in Fast food, quick meal; heavy rain; catch a bus etc. You try to
find the meaning of each word separately but what you bring is a
mess, a confusion of meaning.
Another characteristic of collocations is that they are enough
flexible patterns of language which allow several variations in form.
For example deliver a baby, delivery of a letter, a letter has been delivered and
having delivered a letter are all acceptable collocations.
Sinclair (1991, p.109) sees collocations as occurrence of two or
more words within a short space of each other in a text. He
distinguishes the "node" and the "collocate" the node is the main
word in the collocation pattern and the words that come either to
the right or to the left of the node are called collocates. In
relation to these collocates, Sinclair suggests that each
collocation has its span; this is the distance between the
collocation’s constituents. (the number of lexical items on each
side) Although the span can be measured by the number of
collocates, Sinclair suggests that the siginficant collocates are
found within a span of 4:4 they can be found in a span of four
words on each side of the node (before and after the word) as a
standard measurement of a span. Collocational range commonly
depends on the different meanings and senses of the word; a more
generic word collocates with more words and thus its collocational
range will be wider. However, more specific words collocate with
fewer words and thus the collocational range is narrower, as is
the case with bound and restricted collocations. The nodes and
collocates are important terms to define collocations. Important
is to chose the " node" in each lexical category of collocations.
-Collocations have the characteristics of combinability and
transparency which are decisive characteristics.
Combinability:
The classification of collocations (Aisenstad 1979,1981) is based
on the combinability of the elements within a collocation. In the
example make/ take a decision one element of a collocation is
considered to be restricted in its combinability. Restricted
combinability is when the words can co-occur with a word, three
or more words or collocates. The verbs make and take are combined
with " a decision" so there are two possibilities of verbs to combine
with a noun "a decision". Thus it is not restricted. [-
Restricted combinability].The verbs have a wide and unclear
meaning and collate with many different nouns. (Aisenstad
1981:57).When the word in a collcation has only one possibility in
combnining with other words it is refered as [+Restricted
combinability].Collocation occurs when two or more words combine,
forming a lexical unit such as "to have a lunch", or "extremely
happy". When the word has only one possibility of combinability
with other words they refer to restricted combinability. Howarth
(1996) considered combinability as a significant factor that
characterizes collocations. Some scholars use only the criterion
of combinability to distinguish collocations from free
combinations and others find both the criterion of combinability
and transparency necessary to differentiate between collocations
and idioms. (Aisenstad 1979;1981). For Warth combinability is a
significant factor that characterizes collocations.
Transparency (freely recombinable collocations)
Can be expressed as figurativeness of the words in a collocation.
It means weather the elements of the combination have a literal
or a non- literal meaning (Nesselhauf 2005). When a collocation is
literal, is defined as [+Transparency] and when is not literal is
regarded as [-Transparency] This is one criteria that has always
been used to distinguish between collocations and idioms
(Aisenstad 1979; 1981). In collcoations whose meanings are
transparent , the primary or literal meaning of the word is used
in combination with other words. In terms of collocations whose
meanings are not literal, the figurative sense of the word can be
identified rather its literal sense in combination with other
words.
1) +Restricted combinability / + Transparency (literal meaning) --
beautiful creature(krijesë e bukur)
2) -Restricted combinability/-Transparency (figurative
meaning)---------odd chaps(njerëz të mykur)
The first group includes collocations in which the node can
be combined only with one or two possible words and in which
a collocate has literal features in meaning (i. e. if a
collocate "verb " in the "verb +noun " collocation for
example, has literal meaning, it is classified as
transparency even if the collocation has figurative
meaning.for example: cure the soul (literal meaning)------- shëroj
shpirtin, but cure the soul means to be purified, honest as a
person.
The second group includes collocations that are not
restricted in combinability ( i.e the nod can be combined
with three or more possible words) with non literal or
figurative meaning. It is classified as [- transparency]
even if a noun in a" verb + noun" collocation has literal
meaning). A collocation is classified as [+transparency ]
when one of the words are used in their primary literal sense
and [-transparency] when either of the words are used in
their figurative sense. Tell the truth for example is
characterized as [+restricted combinability], whereas in the
case of make a speech there are options such as " make"
"give" or " write", and this is a [-restricted
combinability].
[free combinations: run a risk or a business, make an attempt or way]
[restricted combinations: adjective +noun; adverb+ verb; verb
+noun; noun+ verb].
Collocation strength
Carter (1987 in Taiwo, 2004). Lewis (1998 in Deveci, 2004) and
collocations dictionary(2002) make another categorization for
collocations strength.
Strong collocations present a large number, for example the
collocation expression rancid butter is strong and it is
generally used but this doesn’t mean that other things cannot
be rancid. So, strong collocations are words that almost
always go together.
Weak collocations are words which co- occur with a greater
frequency. Many things can be long or short, cheap or expensive, good or
bad, but some things are more predictable, which could be
called collocation for example white wine or red wine.
Medium strength are words that go together with a greater
frequency than weak collocations: hold a meeting, see a doctor etc.
Though different views are addressed to collocations, they
all share the same idea that words co-occur in combination
that can be considered as normal and acceptable in a
language.
Lewis proposes these groups:
Unique collocations. Hill (2000: 63-64) classifies collocations
into unique collocations, which are fixed; strong
collocations, which have a few other possible collocates;
weak collocations, which can be easily predicted; and medium
strength collocations, which Hill (ibid.) suggests to be
strongly emphasized in class. This class include words that
cannot be used in any other collocations; eg foot the bill, there
are no other words that might replace the word bill in this
collocation
Very strong collocations include words that might be used in
other collocations but they are in a lower number.( for example:
trenchant criticism, there are not many other things that can be trenchant)
Weak collocations, are collocations that can be combined with
many other words and provides a lot of possible combinations.
This type is ‘more predictable’, as in: good boy, white
shirt, white wine, etc.
Medium strength. They are between strong and weak
collocations. They have a high frequency than high
collocations.
Collocation range:
McIntosh (81961, in Carter and McCarthy,1988:33) and Baker
(1992:50) state the criteria of collocation range. Collocational
range commonly depends on the different meanings and senses of the
word; a more generic word collocates with more words and thus its
collocational range will be wider. Every word in a language have
a range of items. Range refers to the set of collocates which are
associated with the word. Some words have more collocational range
than others.( for example the English verb shrug has a limited
collocational range, it is collocated only with shoulders,( mbledh
supet) while run has a vast collocational range than others.(run a
company, run a business, show, car, stocking etc). There are two main factors(by
Beakman and Callow) that affect the collocational range of an
item:
specificity:
Translators should bear in mind specificity when they deal with
collocations, however more specific words collocate with fewer
words and thus the collocational range is narrower. The choice of
a correct collocation is influenced by register and genre:
sense of the word.
The more number of senses a word has, it tends to attract a
different set of collocations for each case. Collocational range
generally depends on the different meanings and senses of the
word; a more generic (common) word collocates with more words and
thus its collocational range will be wider; more specific words
collocate with fewer words and thus the collocational range is
narrower.
The collocational range of words may be different in the SL and
TL. Collocation ranges are not fixed since people create new
collocations all the time. Words usually do not exist in isolation
but in combinations, and each word gains different meanings when
it collocates with other words. Lyons (1981: 52) defines the
collocational range of an expression as "the set of contexts in
which it can occur". He gives the two examples of big and large, as
he discusses synonymy, which are not always necessarily
interchangeable as in: You are making a big mistake and not a large
mistake, whereas a big house can substitute for a large house. Thus the
collocational range of an expression is not always determined by
its meaning. Leech illustrates this with words" pretty" and "handsome"
and the collocate of each. These words share the common grounds
for "good looking" but they are distinguished by the range of nouns
which are most probable to co-occur. So the word meaning changes
as it collocates change. This word patterns are different from one
language to another. The SL may express an idea in one lexical
item, while TL may express the same idea in two or three lexical
items and we cannot pretend a total equivalence in the number of
words because it does not exist).
Maning and Schutz (1999:173) also claim some typical linguistic
characterizations of collocations:
Non-compositionality, which means that the meaning of a
collocation is not a direct composition(creation) of the
meaning of its parts). Collocations are not fully
compositional because of an extra meaning added to the
combination, e.g., the adjective strong in strong tea possesses
the meaning rich in flavour which is different from the
original sense having physical strength.
Non substitutability, The components of a collocation cannot be
substituted even by their synonyms . e.g., it is no possible
to use yellow wine instead of white wine even though yellow is a
suitable adjective for the description of the color of wine
Non modifiability, usually collocations do not accept or cannot
be freely modified with extra lexical items or the
grammatical transformations. A grammatical transformation is
not usually acceptable in the collocational structure for
example: to change singular into plural (1999,pp.172-173). It
is not possible to modify frog in the expression "to get a frog in
one’s throat " into "to get an ugly frog in one’s throat " though the noun
frog can be modi ed by an adjective fi ugly (Manning, Schütze,
1999, p.184).
(Barnwell (1980, p. 55) states that collocation is concerned
with the co - occurrence of words with what other words does a
word usually occur? With what other words may it acceptably occur?
One word can have different meanings according to the word it
collocates with, such as: develop an area, develop a film, and develop a disease.
This indicates that the co-occurrence of the words in any
collocation is very important for the meaning of the word, as the
changing of one word can affect the whole meaning of the
collocation.
.
Register
is strongly connected to collocations in the sense that it can
determine the type of collocation that is used. Sinclair (1991, p.
109) claims the relation between register and collocation by
stating that when a register choice is made, all choices are
greatly reduced in scope or in some cases, assimilated. The
following examples will illustrate this idea. Examples of general
collocations are: He will give me a call when he arrives at the hotel. Some other
collocations are subject field specific. Collocations are cohesive,
recurrent, arbitrary combinations of words which are not idioms
but in which the figurative meaning of one part is contextually
restricted to the specific combination. Translators should bear in
mind specificity when they deal with collocations, as
the more specific a word is the narrower its collocational range
will be. Furhermore
choosing a correct collocation should be influenced by register
and genre. Baker
mentions (1992, p. 52) that collocations that occur in one area of
discourse will not be so
in another area. It is commonly known that collocations have two
general classifications:
common collocations, which are used in everyday language
register-specific collocations, which are used in specialized
subject fields
o The notion of recurrence (Smadja 1993) is most typically
captured in the definition of collocation as 'recurrent
combination of words that co-occur more often than expected
by chance.
o Idiomatic because they belong to the semantic characteristics
making up the collocation and the way they are combined.
(Cowie and Mackin 1975), have stated that a collocation is
not an idiom because the meaning of the whole reflects the
meaning of the parts. The least we can say is that in most
cases the meaning of the collocate is not its most prominent
one.
o Contextually restricted means that the collocate is not found
"outside that limited context" some part is only used in
restricted context but some lexical variation is also
possible.
o Cohesiveness means that the presence of one or several words
suggest the rest of collocations. The notions are combined in
such a way that the base selects a specific word to express
a certain meaning. This combination is responsible for the
cohesion between elements
o The notion "arbitrary" relates to lexis. There is no semantic
reason in the word combinations.
Collocations can be characterized as follows. See Al-Qasimi (1979-29-30):
1. A collocation does not constitute a semantically or grammaticalsingle indivisible unit.2. The meaning of the collocation can be predicated from the meanings of the individual words themselves.
3. Unlike idioms, collocations can’t be replaced by any lexical /substitute word4. Unlike idioms, collocations vary i.e. the individual lexical items can be substituted by similar words without changing the whole meanings.
The University of Washington for Instructional Development and
Research names the criteria of fixedness as a way to describe
collocations. It places all collocations from unfixed, the less
fixed, to the very fixed.
Fixed collocations(opaque idioms) are those in which the
pattern has very few expected variations they behave very
much like idioms. Unlike them they have fairly transparent
meanings.” (Baker, 1992: 64). Houseman differentiates between
fixed and non fixed word combinations: collocation as such
belongs to the non-fixed kind of word combinations, he
explains that a collocation consists of a base and a
collocator. The base determines its collocator, the same
points Maxwell and Heylen (1994, p. 299) in determining that
collocations consist of two parts, the base and the
collocate. Commit a crime where the noun crime is the base and
the verb commit is the collocate.
Less fixed collocations in the case of more structural and
are defined as "common patterns that help structure a
sentence" but don’t carry as much specific meaning by
themselves. Less fixed collocations (less structural) are
words that are commonly used with other words.
Collocations are normally characterized as arbitrary and independent
of meaning (Baker, 1992, p. 48). This arbitrariness of language is
across languages and dialects. In American English one may say set
the table and make a decision while in British lay the table and take decision.
These characteristics indicate the difficulties in determining
what is an acceptable collocation. Researchers take advantage of
the fact that collocations are often domain specific, collocations
that are not part of everyday language. Thus file collocates with
verbs such as create, delete, save but not in other sublanguages. Benson
emphasizes that the "The arbitrary nature of collocations can be
established when they are put together with parallel collocations
in other languages. With regard to arbitrariness, Sarikas (2006,
p. 34) does not believe in it. He agrees that producing a
productive collocation requires a greater degree of competence in
language and the notion of arbitrariness is explained by
predictability, where a native speaker of the language can predict
these collocations while a learner of the same language finds it
hard to collocate the words.
One other characteristic of collocations is that they can occur
constantly (frequently or continually) in the text. This means
that there is not only one possibility to translate collocations,
one word might be translated in several different ways (usually
collocations are not translated in so many ways), but sometimes
more than one solution is possible. for example the word " e bukur"
may be translated as pretty, beautiful, attractive or good looking. So sometimes
it is possible to translate the collocation in two or more ways
using several synonyms. It is not advisable to use all the
possibilities in one text because it makes it contradictory.(the
reader would get confused).
According to Sarikas, collocations have many important functions
in language which is to help people talk and write about any topic
and to communicate effectively. Having a productive collocation
means to know which adjective are used with which nouns and vice
versa. The other function is that “language that is
collocationally rich is also more precise” which means that they
make the text have a more precise meaning.
1.4 Limitations to the study
This study is focused only at one type of collocation: Lexical
collocations, respectively (adj +n; adv + adj; v + n; n+ n). The
other limitation is that we are dealing with literary text when
these collocations are mostly used. The collocations are
translated only from English into Albanian and not viceversa.Of
great importance and highly challenging is also when we translate
from Albanian into English,we struggle to find the proper word,
but often we fail due to the unfamiliarity with language.
Chapter 2: Types of collocations.
2.1 Definitions of collocations.
Collocation is a new phenomenon and its definition is not fully
agreed on. Linguists define the notion of collocation variously:
collocations present specific problems in translation because
they are also difficult to handle for foreign language learners
and essentially is a lexical relation between words that is likely
to combine and form one semantic unit, they are not subject to
rules but to tendencies. There are no rules for these
combinations, but constrains that define the way they can be
combined to convey meaning. This chapter deals with collocations
and different definitions that were ensured on how this notion is
handled by many scholars.
Collocation- co + location, co-means together with and
location occur in one place together. Each collocation
consists of two parts — a base and a collocation ―The base
bears most of the meaning of the collocation and cause the use
of the collocation. This distinction is best illustrated by
collocations which include support verbs (McKeown and Radev
512). However, some scholars have pointed out that
collocation comes from Latin.
McArthur and Wales (1992: 231) claim that collocation comes
"from Latin collocation/ collocationis - placing together",
and give it two interpretations:
( 1) the act of putting two or more things together,
especially words in a pattern, and the result of that act.
(2) From linguistic point of view, a habitual association
between particular words, such as to and fro in the phrase to and
fro.
Also, Singleton (2000:47) demonstrates collocation comes from
two Latin words, the word cum (with) and the word locus
(place). Words that form collocations are constantly placed
with each other, they often co-occur within a short distance
of each other in speech and in written texts".
The importance of collocation in language is given by
McCarthy (1990: 12) when states that it is a marriage
contract between words, and some words are more firmly
married to each other than others. It is an important
organizing principle in the vocabulary of any language.
The existence of many distinct definitions of collocations
indicates that there are no precise definitions but some
attempts that explain them.
Dalia Abdel Hakim says that using collocations appropriately
resembles solving a puzzle game, because the translator
select the right collocating words as if he is selecting the
right piece of puzzle that is the closed one. I think is a
topic of interest to be thinking about and the interest
stands on these words that are used together and do not
accept any other word to go with it. As in fast food but not a
quick food. Unfamiliarity with English language brings
difficulties in translating collocations. The definition of
the term itself is interesting:
Collocations are a lexical phenomenon, they include word
pairs and phrases that are generally used in language and no
syntactic or semantic rules are applied.
The British linguistic Firth is the first who dealt with
collocational phenomenon and is also believed to be the
"father" of the term collocation. To him (ibid.), collocation,
or lexical meaning, is one of five dimensions of meaning
(phonetic, lexical, morphological, syntactic and semantic).
In other words, collocation is “the company a word keeps”
(Firth, 1957:11). Porzig (1930) argued for the recognition
of the importance of syntagamatic relations between “bite”
and “teeth”, “bark” and “dog”, “blond” and “hair. In a
slightly different way Firth argued: He presents his typical
definition of collocations as " the company words keep
together".(cited in Zughoul, 2001: 02).
A number of definitions have been given for the phrase "
collocation" but a pioneering classification of this word
combination has been made by Palmer (1993), who collected examples
from dictionaries.
Palmer indicated that a collocation is a succession of two
or more words that must be learnt as an integral whole and
not pieced together from its component parts(ibid: 1) The study
he made left an impressionable effect especially on teachers
who thought that what made English difficult were not words
or grammar but the existence of so many odds coming together
as words that made the process of learning unclear and an
undetermined barrier(ibid: 13). His selection of collocations
is based on arbitrary selection from dictionaries. He
presented the "recognition knowledge" of collocations in
order to use "production knowledge"
According to Ghazala a collocation is a combination of two or
more words that always occur together consistently in
different context in language they are words which are
usually found next to other words. Firth and Ghazala both
stress the importance of context of surrounding words for
the collocation to be understood. Components of a collocation
often co-occur naturally, by chance.
Baker states that "a collocation is a systematically
arbitrary restriction which does not follow logically from
the prepositional meaning of a word ". one must know that
English people toast bread and not grill it. He stresses the
importance of collocations as devices that help to make the
language more appealing, expressive and moving. . In all of
the definitions above, focus is placed on lexical, rather
than grammatical collocation.
Haliday defines collocations as a " linear co-occurrence
relationship among lexical items which co-occur together".(a
word like tea occurs with the adjective strong, not with powerful although both
have the same meaning).
Sinclair marks that " lexical items" have a tendency to
collocate with one another, and that these tendencies have
the task of telling us facts about language that cannot be
got by grammatical analysis (cited in Schnese), while Schnese
quotes from Sinclair's (1991) that on some occasions, words
are chosen in pairs or groups and are not necessarily close
(p.115). She depends on this to define collocations as "co-
occurrence between words" (2002, p.9). They are described as
a "natural combination of words" and the way English words
are closely associated with each other.(McCarthy and O'Dell,
2collcoations 4).
Nida (1982) defined collocation as “a structured combination
of words with COMPATIBLE semantic components” (198).
Stubbs (2001) indicate that co-occurrence relation between
words often are strong and suggest that "collocation is a
linear string: a node predicts that a following word also
occurs.
Baker come close to Sinclair with her definition stating that
collocations would be thought as "the tendency of certain
words to co-occur commonly in a given language" (1992, p.47).
She indicates that every word in a language has its own
collocational range or a set of words, usually compatible
with it. The specificity of a word and the variety of
meanings it has are factors that determine the collocational
range of this word. When the word is more general its
collocational range is wider.
Palmer (1986) focused on sense restrictions that are based
wholly on the meaning of the collocated items.
Abdul Raof notes that the "violation" of the collocational
restrictions can produce unacceptable sentences although they
are grammatical. The brake of these restrictions of
collocations exist when words are "employed figuratively" The
understanding of the components of a collocation are
important in producing a correct collocation. He states that
words are collocationaly restricted as they co-exist only in
relation with their mates is a special linguistic
environment. They are defined both as non-idiomatic
expressions and as non free combinations
Cruse (2000) talks about co-occurrence preferences between
words. According to him words have "definite preferences
and dis-preferences" (p.76),which says why words accept to
co-occur with some intensifiers but refuses to appear with
other ones, even though they may reflect the same degree or
intensity.
David Crystal writes in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia of
Language (1987: 50) that ‘collocation is a kind of continuum,
running from total predictability at one end to words having
no predictability at the other. The more fixed a collocation
is, the more we think of it as an idiom.
Yule (1997:122-123) attain that we frequently give the
meaning of words in terms of their relationships. He focuses
on the specific kind of lexical relations known as
collocation, one way we seem to organize our knowledge.
According to Mitchell (1971: 52), collocation is
"a composite structural element in its own right" e of
words". This abstract mixture defines the generalization of
such associations which give a purely definition of the non-
figurative nature of collcoations.
According to Cowie (1981, p. 224), a collocation is defined
as “a composite unit which permits the substitutability of
items for at least one of its constituent elements (the sense
of other element, or elements, remaining constant).”
Others, Kjellmer (1987), Kennedy (1991), Mauranen (2000),
Sinclair (2004) included, define collocations according to
the number of occurrences of a lexical combination
To some linguists and translatologists, collocation is
defined as “basically a lexical relation between words that
are likely to combine regularly with certain other words to
form one semantic unit” (Dweik, & Abu Shakra, 2011: 6), and
words have only “a certain tolerance of compatibility” (Baker
1997: 63). Moreover, “there are nouns that enter into tight
collocational links with verbs and have no separate semantic
description” (Fillmore, 1994: 106).
Pecina (2009) claims that there is no commonly accepted
definition of collocation” and that it is understood “as a
meaningful and grammatical word combination constrained by
extensionally specified restrictions and preferences”
(ibid.). Therefore, it tends to be one of the most problematic
and error-generating area of vocabulary” Martyńska M. (2004:
5).
2.2 Difficulties and problems in translating collocations.
In translating a text, a translator usually faces many problems,
including the problem of translating collocation in his attempt to
transfer meaning from one source language into another receptor
language since every language has its own naturalness, which is
unique and different to another. The uniqueness of a language
means that each language has a certain system that does not
necessarily exist in other languages. Since collocational meaning
cannot be derived directly from the meaning of its components, it
may cause difficulties in the process of translation. In most of
the cases translators face various kinds of difficulties and
problems while translating. In this inner process there are
numerous factors such as social and cultural differences, lexical
and grammatical diversity which makes the translation task very
hard and cause loss in meaning. These translation difficulties
became enormous if SL culture and TL culture differences are
immense. One of the problems translators face is the knowledge
they should have when translating collocations whereas many of
them are misconceived due to a failure to recognize their
linguistic, stylistic, and cultural aspects.
The translation of any collocation pattern explains the vital
nature of them in the entire process of translation. Larson
(1984: 141) concludes that "knowing which words go together is an
important part of understanding the meaning of a text and
translating it well". Combinations of words as co-occurrences
differ from one language to another. Hatim and Mason (1990: 204-
205) notice that "achieving appropriate collocations in the TL
text has always been one of the major problems a translator
faces", so they emphasize the collocational level of meaning as
the main challenge that "confronts the translator" what they pose
is that "what is a natural collocation for one language user may
be less for another". For Palmer when he discusses Firths view of
translation says that it is difficult to find parallels for
collocations of a key word in any other language. He sees this as
either possible or impossible. Based on this, he considers some
preliminary remarks that for him tackle major problems a
translator faces. These remarks deal with problems of equivalence,
problems of structural semantics, problems of cultural
heterogeneity and untranslatability. By defining these remarks it
is possible to judge the successfulness of the translation of
collocation. As Nida and Taber(1969:12) say that "the best
translation does not sound like a translation".
Culture specific collocations.
These collocations may denote a concrete concept that carry
cultural specificity (veil, scarf, clothes) or it may denote
abstract concepts such (good, evil wisdom) etc. They are difficult
to translate not only because they are culture specific but
because they carry connotations. Translators must try to maintain
the connotative meaning but also reflecting the values and norms
of the TL. Culture expound difficulties in their denotative and
connotative meanings. Cultural specificity refers to the
phenomenon that exist only to one of the cultures under
translation. Translators interpret source-culture phenomena based
on their own culture specific knowledge of that culture. Cultural
gap derives from culture specificity of ST and TT and poses a
major problem.
Culture also poses difficulties in the task of translation
rendering it in some cases impossible. Rubel and Rosman (2003).
The difficulties stands to the linguistic differences between SL
culture and TL culture.
Lexical problems.
Here the difficulty remains because students or translators
understand translation as translation of individual words which
lead them to mistakes.Ghazala(1995:85) does not suggest literal or
word for word translation, because it is seen as dangerous and
destroys meaning. So lexical problems are crucial to any SL and
TT. We have to solve them for an effective translation. Also the
one to one or literal translation is the same where when have the
same word order and the same type and number of words. But this is
a better one method than the first because it takes context into
consideration and translates special and metaphorical SL words and
phrases into special words and phrases.
Literal translation of meaning or direct translation, deals with
grammar and word order of the TL. According to Ghazala direct
translation is the best method of literal translation and the most
acceptable one. Linguistics such as Newmark, 1988; Baker 1992;
Bahumaid, 2006 have revealed various problems that translators
have to deal while translating collocations. Baker, 1992 like
others deals with problems bound to cultural and linguistic
collocability between SL and TL. These problems rise due to
collocability of lexemes from one language to another, meaning
that what collates in one meaning does not necessarily collate in
another. In addition we can say that collocations reflect
preference of the specific language. Newmark (1988) believes that
the difficulty of translating collocations lies in two facts.
1) First, the fact that there is an arbitrary relation between
the collocates.
2) Second, at least one of the components has a meaning not in a
primary sense but in a secondary sense.
Each of the lexemes contributes to the meaning of the whole
collocation. She believes that we cannot talk of an impossible
collocation since they can be frequently created. English learners
may face various problems in dealing with collocations because
of their arbitrariness. For example blonde collocate only with hair,
it is unlikely to talk about a blond door or a blond dress even if the
color is similar to that of blonde hair (Palmer1976:77). So there
are always restrictions on the way collocations are combined
together.(Palmer 1976:76, Baker1992:47, and Thornbury, 2002:106)
According to her, unusual combinations occur naturally because
words tend to attract new collocate all the time. She lists five
common pitfalls encountered in translating.
1. The appealing effect of source text patterning
2. Misinterpreting the meaning of a source-language collocation.
3. The tension between accuracy and naturalness.
4. Culture-specific collocations
5. Marked collocations in the source text (Marked collocations
involve deliberate confusion of collocational ranges to create new
images)
Target language equivalent. Finding an acceptable target language
equivalent that is satisfactory is another difficulty which comes
after recognizing a collocation. The translation of collocation is
very difficult especially for non native -speakers which then lead
to two problems for them. The first is the lack of non finding
the proper equivalent between SL and TL and the competence needed
to associate words together in order to produce accurate and
natural English. Amstrong says that "the difficulty for
translators is not so much to recognize a SL collocation but to
find an acceptable equivalent (2005: 98). Although the equivalent
may exist in the TL, choosing the appropriate equivalent requires
a good competence in both languages. So every language learner may
be well qualified when dealing with collocations because they are
frequently used in spoken and written English. It is very
important to know as many collocational meaning as possible
because it will lead us to their mistranslation.
There are cases when one word collocation needs to be translated
with two or three word collocation in TL. As Biguenet and Schulte
(1989: xiii) notice some languages are richer than others in their
word count. The translator cannot pretend for a precise
equivalence because it will never be possible. This is to be
defined as the dilemma and challenge for the translator. When
translating collocations translators ignore or are not aware of
their existence, this cause problems for the translator because at
first language is not made up of large number of words that can be
used together in free variation. Equivalence of SL and TL items
may be found on the level of morpheme, word, phrase, clause,
sentence, paragraph, and the whole text". (Gutknecht and Rolle,
1996: 238). Bassenett-McGuire (1980: 29) states, that equivalence
in translation "should not be treated as sameness since it cannot
exist between two TL versions of the same text. But this view of
Bassenett-McGuire is extreme since there exists, especially
through literal translation even though sameness is a matter of
'cannot very often exist'.
Untranslatability. Pym and Turk (2000: 273) indicate as mostly
understood as the capacity for some kind of meaning to be
transferred from one language to another without undergoing
radical change". The art of translation will always have ''to cope
with the reality of untranslatability from one language to
another" (Friedrich 1992: 11). It may be linguistic,(for example
unfamiliar word order, unfamiliar collocations, use of words with
lower frequency) or cultural, including unfamiliarity with the
source text". Bassnett-McGuire (1980: 32-37) and Mason (2000: 32).
Misinterpreting. Misinterpreting of meaning is another difficulty
that collocation pose this happen due to the influence of our
language (TL) that the collocation may seem familiar to us because
it resembles one in our native language. Students face a lot of
difficulties when they have to choose between producing a typical
collocation in TL and preserving the source meaning at the mean
time. therefore there is loss in meaning.
Generalization. Generalisation is another problem, some English
words collate with one and the same word in English. The
difficulty relies because it cannot be generalized about the
meaning of a word which collates with different words, because it
may differ from collocation to another and from language to
language (Ghazala 1993:32). This variation across languages poses
difficulties for students. Collocations in the TL have more than
one possibility for the same collocation in the SL. So kinds of
words that go together in one language are often completely
different from the kinds of words in another language (Kharma and
Hajjaj,1989:67and Harmer,2001:20). These are cultural differences
and every language is the basis upon which culture rest. Each
language have its own collocation pattern which reflect the
speakers mentality, knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law,
customs, habits (Farghal and Shanaq,1999:122). It is important to
state that collocational difficulty is attributed besides culture,
to learners who lack the knowledge of their linguistic competence
in target language.
New English collocations. New English collocations pose difficulty
in translation. According to Saricas (2006:37) " New English
collocations which use noun compounds or adjectives + noun have
resulted difficult in translation.(common in social sciences and
computer language). Their translation is difficult because they
need a clear context and some of them are crucial in their
physical meaning which gives a strange translation.
Not only linguistic differences between languages create
difficulties, cultural differences also play a significant role.
Ghazala ( 2001: 1) says: "usually cultural terms are thought to
pose the most difficult problems in translation". Culture creates
difficulties because of different interpretations of these
concepts by different societies in both their denotative and
connotative meaning. Lexical gaps is a concept which may exist in
one language may not exist in another. According to Baker
(1992:60) like culture specific words, collocations point to
concepts which are not easily attainable to the target reader. In
addition the overuse of literal translation proves to cause
problems for students. Ghazala maintains that " The central
lexical problem faced by students is their direct translation of
almost all words" leading them in errors (1995:84). It seems that
the difficulty depends mainly on the use of primary and non
primary sense on the component words. Collocations where words are
used in their primary sense are easily understood and translated
and they serve as a clue for the translator to guess the meaning
of the unknown or less transparent element. The problem starts
when one or both of the component words deviate from their
primary sense.
There is always a tension in achieving accuracy and naturalness.
Baker (1992:56) notices that some translators aim at producing
collocations that are typical in the target language and at the
same time preserving the accurate meaning associated with the
source collocation. The ideal translation cannot be achieved
always, since translation involves a difficult choice between what
is typical and what is accurate. Even the nearest acceptable
collocation in the target language will often involve some change
in meaning which can be significant or not. What is to be
emphasized is that in translation a certain amount of loss is
unavoidable. Language systems tend to be too different to produce
exact reproductions in most cases.
2.3 The distinction between collocations and idioms
Many researchers that study collocations claim that their
classification is a matter of inconsistency, thus they offer
different classifications of them. One of the debatable issues
among linguistics is whether or not idioms are considered as
collocations. Bolinger (1976) makes a distinction between
collocations and idioms stating that in the case of collocations
it is possible to deduce the whole meaning from at least one of
its part, whereas the meaning of an idiom cannot be understood
from the meaning of its constituent. Manning and Schutze (1999,
p.141) use this criteria to show that idioms are collocations and
that they are characterized by "a limited compositionality" and
in most
of the cases there is "an element of meaning added to the
combination", while idioms are considered to be the most extreme
examples of non compositionality.
Idioms are a different group from collocations, as the elements of
idioms are used together in specialized senses forming a single
semantic unit (rigid expressions), which has a figurative meaning.
According to Baker (1992, p. 63) idioms are “frozen patterns of
language which allow little or no variation in form and often
carry meanings which cannot be deducted from their individual
components. The meanings of the elements in the collocation the
water freezes can be understood as individual semantic elements -
the freezing of the water. However, the idiom pull one’s leg does
not connote the meanings of its parts pull + one’s + leg.(tërheq
këmbën e dikujt)
Cruse (1986, pp.37- 41) describes a differ way of idioms and
collocations considering them as two separate terms. At the same
time he represents what he calls "bound collocations" or
expressions "whose constituents do not like to be separated". As
J. Sinclair (2004:18) puts it “a grammar is a grammar of meanings
not of words” . In this perspective, collocability refers to
sharing meanings between words and between phrases and the result
is the collocation according to which the choice of one word
conditions the choice of the next. Idioms are a different group
from collocations, as the elements of idioms are used together in
specialized senses forming a single semantic unit (rigid
expressions), which has a figurative meaning. Sarikas adds that
idioms often have the same meaning as other lexical items in the
language but carry several emotive connotations not expressed in
the others (2006, p. 34), as in the idiom kick the bucket. The line
between idioms and collocations is not always very clear.
Mc McCarthy and O'Dell indicate that idioms are also groups of co-
occurring words but in a fixed order that have a meaning which
cannot be guessed by knowing the meaning of individual words. In
the same way Baker (1992:63) does not consider idioms as
collocation and states that though the meaning of a word depends
on its association with other words, the word has an individual
meaning in a given collocation. For example dry cow means a cow that
does not produce milk. Such particular meaning associated with the
word dry can be identified in this collocation- because cow means a
farm animal kept for its milk. While idioms carry meanings which cannot be
deduced from their individual components. They are frozen patterns
of language which allow little or no variation in form often carry
meanings which cannot be deducted from their individual
components.(Baker 1992,p.63). There are three ways of recognizing
an idiom:
1) Idioms are combinations of words2)They are firstly accepted and used as something new only when necessary.3) The meaning of an idiom cannot be obtained from the meaning of its words.
Unlike collocations the difficulties involved in translating idiom
are summarized by Baker (1992: 68-71):
• An idiom or fixed expression may have no equivalent in the TL. • An idiom or fixed expression may have a similar counterpart in the TL, but its context of use may be different; they may have different connotations or not be pragmatically transferable. • An idiom may be used in the ST in both its literal and idiomaticsenses at the same time and this play on idiom may not be successfully reproduced in the TT. • The agreement regarding idioms in written discourse, the contexts in which they can be used and their frequency of use may be different in the SL and TL.Collocations can be learned in this inductive way since they themselves are specific linguistic symbols of units.
Many linguistics and translators Mitchell (1975, p. 125), Cowie
(1981, p. 224), Cruse (1986, p. 37), Evelyn et al. (1986, p. 253),
Shakir, A. & Farghal, M. (1991, p. 1), Baker (1992, p. 63), and
Sarikas (2006, p. 34) believe that an idiom is classified as a
fixed combination that has a meaning as a whole but the meaning of
its individual words are not the same as the meaning of the
combination. However some experts do really make a distinction
between collocations and idioms. In a collocation the components
can freely go with other words. The words" rosy" and "cheek" in
the collocation "rosy cheek" can collocate with other words as in
"plump cheeks" or "rosy down" in order to form other collocations.
An idiom can be free in its combination but is more fixed in word
collocation. We can say "bread and butter" but not "butter and
bread. Shakir & Farghal (1991, p. 1) find that collocations and
idioms are more obvious also when they are used in language. They
note that collocations are “more communicatively useful” than
idioms as they are more common in real speech or materials and
“rarely replaceable” by other lexical substitutes. On the other
hand, idioms are used more in informal conversation and thus they
are used more in real speech or materials, as they are easily
replaced by other lexical constituents.
Nonetheless, collocations remain different from idioms. An idiom
almost permits variations. For instance, ‘make friends with’
cannot vary to become ‘make a friend with’. It is an idiom with a
fixed structure that yields one meaning in context. Patsala (2004:
1034) adopts these two criteria for the distinction between idioms
and collocations:
a) semantic transparency and high frequency of use for collocations, and
b) semantic opacity (lack of transparence) and fixed structure for idioms".
2.4 Lexical and grammatical collocations. (Benson and Ilson (1985,1997):
Different linguistics have been given varieties of classifications
of collocations. Linguists divide collocations into two major
groups: grammatical and lexical collocations. The distinction
between grammatical and lexical collocations is based on the
status of the constituents of the word combinations as content
words or function words (Bartsch, 2004, p.54). Linguists
distinguish seven types of collocations; however, the paper
focuses on four most common types of lexical collocations.
Lexical collocations
Lexical collocations are defined by Benson et.al (1986) as phrases
consisting of dominant words, they are natural combinations
between content words (noun, adjective, verb, adverb and a
preposition) in few words they are the co-occurrence of nouns,
adjectives, verbs or adverbs they are in contradiction to
grammatical collocations and do not contain prepositions,
infinitives or clauses. do not contain subordinate element, they
comprise two lexical components. A lexical collocations according
to Zhang is a type of collocation where one component frequently
co-occurs with one or more other components as the only lexical
choice or one of the few lexical choices in a combination.
Lexical collocations consist of three types:
1) open collocations (open class word) which are characterized by the
combination of two or more words that occur together and have no
relation between them and can be freely combinable. For instance,
the verb catch collocates with a wide range of other words bus, train,
cold, and fire. Unrestricted collocations have the capacity of being
open to keep company with a wide range of words.
2) Restricted collocations which are the most used one. The word
can collocate with limited and fixed words. Restricted
collocations are defined by Aisenstadt (1979, p. 71) as
“combinations of two or more words used in one of their regular
non idiomatic meaning" Restricted combinations differ from free
combinations because they co-occur with a small number of words.
Evelyn, et al. (1986, p. 253) provide to commit a murder as an example
where the verb collocates with a few nouns such as murder and crime.
” In fact, the more restricted a collocation is, the more
difficult is its translation into another language. This must
apply to culture-specific and language-specific terms, such as
those used in greetings, condolences, compliments, expressions of
thanks and gratitude (see Ferguson, 1983; Shammas, 1995; 2005).
3) Bound collocations are, as Cowie (1981, p. 228) describes them,
“a bridge category between collocations and idioms. ” The
significant feature of this group is that one of the elements of
the collocation is, as Emery states (1987, p. 9), “uniquely
selective” of the other. One example is to shrug one’s shoulders.
Grammatical collocations
While grammatical collocations or colligations is the co-occurrence
of nouns, verbs or adjectives with prepositions or certain
features of grammar, for example, a comparative form of an
adjective with the word than,or the verb deal with the preposition
with (Carter, 1998: 60) they are involved in closed class word. These
two types of collocations according to the word class appear to
be easily recognized to language learners and also as the most
frequent patterns. The close class words (lexical collocation) is
the case of a preposition such as different from, jumped up,thrust
away,danced out, passed across,looked at, etc. These two types of collocations
can be easily recognizable to language learners (Benson and
Ilson,1985). Lexical collocations refer to restricted word pairs
where they combine two equal lexical components, while grammatical
collocations combine a lexical word typically a noun, verb or
adjective with the grammatical word. The grammatical collocation
was defined as frequent combination of a dominant word (verb,
noun, adjective) followed by a grammatical word, typically a
preposition (apologize to; carry on) and the lexical collocations
do not contain subordinate element, they comprise two lexical
components, they do not contain preposition, infinitive or
clauses, they consist of two equal lexical components.(adjective+
noun; verb+ noun, noun +verb, adverb + adjective, verb +adverb) .
Both categories verb + noun and delexicalised verb + noun
collocation have been considered by researchers as not only the
most difficult for learners (Biskup 1992). According to Altenberg
(1993:227) they tend to form the "communicative core utterances
where the most important information is placed. The other category
of adjective + noun has not been studied at all. Grammatical
collocation is a type of collocation where one component co-
occurs with one or more other components as a grammatical
category. Lexical collocation is a combination of two or more
lexemes (e.g. serious damage), grammatical collocation is a
combination of a lexeme and a preposition (e.g. rely on). Smadja
(1993) argues that grammatical collocations are similar to lexical
ones because of their arbitrariness and co- occurrences of words;
however, grammatical collocations are much simpler in structure,
many of them include only one open class word which might be the
reason for dictionaries to actually include them.The main
difference between lexical and grammatical collocations is that
lexical collocations do not contain grammatical elements, e.g. good
work, strong tea, etc. (Moehkardi, 2002, p.59); moreover, lexical
collocation “has been called a relation of mutual expectancy or
habitual association” (Jackson, 1988, p.114). Each word
constituting a lexical collocation plays a significant role
because it contributes to the general meaning of the whole.
Four combination of lexical collocations ( The four major lexical
group).
Category Types of Lexical
Collocations
Example from the
translated work.
1 Adjective +Noun [A + N] Silly boy
2 Adverb +Adjective [Adv. +
Adj.]
Horribly dull
3 Verb+ Noun [V+N] Feed the hungry
4 Noun +Noun [N + N] Candour of youth
These are the most frequent types of lexical collocationsin the novel "The portrait of
Dorian Gray"
o Collocations that contain an adjective + noun such as silly boy
in which the translator aims to find the accurate adjective
in the target language such as djalë debil or djalë budalla.These
combinations are more frequently used in my work and are
really useful one (Benson 1985). This category benefits L2
and should be included in dictionaries. Such as "poor chap"
"pallid face" "bad business"
o Collocations that contain an adverb and an adjective such as
horribly thoughtless in which the translator aims to find the
equivalent adverb such as flet pa u menduar fare or tmerrrsisht i
pakujdeshëm. These are considered as difficult cases in
translation.
o Collocations that contain a verb and a noun such as examined
the picture serves the communicative aspect where the most
important information is placed (Altenberg,199:227) The task
of the translator here is not a demanding one since he has to
translate literally.
o Collocations that contain noun and a noun such as secrets of life
the translator again aims at finding an accurate noun is that
is more suitable for the target text, such as sekretet e jetës or
të fshehtat e jetës This category of collocation is less frequently
used but not of less importance.
Chapter 3: Collocations and literary texts.
3.1 Translation
Translation theory has been viewed as "an essay in continual
compensation" (Newmark 2001: 64).
Translation itself is a process that often deals us with problems
of any kind, it involves taking various features into
consideration in different languages, and thereby a common
problem for a translator is to find corresponding expressions in
the target language. Over the years translation has gained a great
importance and value, used not only as a means of transferring SL
words into TL words but also as a means of communication and
transmitter of culture. Nowadays it is used broadly and with more
confidentiality by professional translators. The base level when
translators translate is the text itself, so while translating we
face lexical items, cultural words, synonyms work over them, find
all their meaning and try to find the best solution that is
required in translation.
To achieve a good translation translators should have knowledge in
all possible collocations. We know that translation process also
depends on the kind or method of translation we are using.
Translators use different methods of translating, but when use
literal translation in the case of collocations it doesn’t always
function. As we translate we take words either separately or in
context; but when dealing with collocations words are not taken
separately. It is a challenge because most of the times we
cannot find the equivalent of the collocation in TL. It is also
noteworthy for translators to get the right meaning of these
words. A lot of definitions from different researches has been
given to the process of translation. Catford (1965: 20 ) defines
translation as the " replacement of textual material in one
language SL by equivalent textual material in another language
TL". Basically, translation is transferring a SL text into a
respective TL text. So in this process there are involved two
languages, the SL or the language of departure and TL which is the
language of achivement or the language which is being translated
into.
Ghazala defines translation as " generally used to refer to all
the processes and methods that convey meaning of the SL into the
TL" (1995:1) So he states that the aim of translation is meaning
which is not the result of lexemes but is a mixture of components
of language such as grammar, vocabulary, phonology, style. Vinay
and Darbelnet House agree with mentalist approach who states
that translation is considered as an individual creative act that
depends only in subjective interpretations. Texts have no core
meaning for them but their meaning changes according to the
speaker position. While for Nida a good translation is one that
achieves "equivalence of response", he took readers reactions to a
translation as a means for its quality. The role of the
translators should be to maintain the beauty and aesthetic aspect
of the ST and try to put it into TT in the best possible way.
(Xiaosong). For Nida and Taber, 1969 Hartmann and Stork: 1972, in
Bell, 1991: 7). Translation is the replacement of a representation
of a text in one language by a representation of an equivalent
text in a second language"
For Catford the translation purpose is not to transfer meaning
between languages but to replace a source language meaning by a
target one. Catford (1965: 25) differentiates between three kinds
that could be regrouped into two: the "word-for-word" or "literal"
translation and the "free" translation. Larson (1984: 15) re-
subcategorises translation into "literal" and "idiomatic". The
former, to Catford and Larson, is form-based translation, and the
latter is meaning-based translation that does not sound like a
translation. The communicative translation to him focuses on the
reader's understanding of the identical message of the source
language text, whereas the semantic translation focuses on
rendering the exact contextual meaning of the original as closely
as possible. He concludes that all translations must be in some
degree both communicative and semantic, social and individual. Our
concern here relates to what translation procedures are most
pertinent to the translation of collocation. Quite noticeably,
translation has always been juxtaposed with terms such as
difficulties, problems, concerns etc, so is it with the
translation of collocation. Meaning is of paramount importance in
translation because, as Bell (1991: 79) explains "without
understanding what the text to be translated means for the L2
users the translator would be hopelessly lost". This necessitates
that a translator be a semanticist at the same time and well
equipped with the skill to analyze the significance of semantic
relations, of which collocation is a recognizable one in
translation.
3.2. Translation of collocations.
The notion of collocation has been one of the cornerstones of
linguistics and has been the subject of a significant reasoning
and empirical research. Collocations are considered as inevitable
sources of loss in translation in SL and TL. sufficient knowledge
on all collocations and their types is needed in order to gain an
acceptable or accurate translation The translation of collocation
creates many difficulties because the meaning of the word changes
when it combines with other words. They cannot be translated as
word for word.Translating collocations is considered to be one of
the main barriers that translators face, even though in most of
the cases it is difficult to find the accurate equivalences due to
the fact languages form their collocations in different, unique
and even arbitrary ways. The influence of the ST, cultural and
language specific collocations, being natural versus accurate are
factors that affect the translation of collocation, yet they are
not so easy to be handled. Thus the translation of collocation as
Ghazala (2004) states, besides being an interesting part or the
task of the translators job it is in effect very challenging and
demanding one. That is why translators should be sensible to all
types of collocations particularly when translating them.
The translation of collocation is also defined by Chang (1997) as
one of the most problematic lexical cohesion when checking
grammatical and lexical cohesive devices used in learners writing.
Furthermore many learners will use the literal translation to
produce acceptable or unacceptable collocations and sometimes
they rely on their intuition to translate a collocation and to use
textual equivalence rather than literal translation.(Liu, 2000b).
However it does not always work as it may lead to an incorrect
translation. A considerable amount of attention has been given to
the collocational meaning by Baker (2001: 53) who made it clear
that there is a big difference between the individualistic or isolated
meaning of the word and its contextualised or collocational
meaning. The meaning of one word is not extracted out of its own
isolation, rather it is evoked by its association with co-
occurring collocates. "knowing which words go together is an
important part of understanding the meaning of the text and
translating it well". Larson's (1984: 141) (ibid) explains, since
some words "often occur together "other words may occur together
"occasionally" and some combinations of words are not likely to
occur. However, to collocate means to put side by side and this
sidedness is not the same in different languages.
The 'company' that lexical items keep is the first noticeable
element in identifying meaning by collocation. Mutual expectancy
is another feature of the elements that demonstrates meaning by
collocation. Finally 'habituality of co-occurrence' should also be
borne in mind when discussing meaning by collocation. The lexical
items are used to co-occur together. Hence, in the process of
translation, there are benefits from this lexical feature since
the habitual co occurrence takes place in all languages, though in
fact collocability of certain items of one language does not
necessarily guarantee an immediate TL equivalent.
The translation of collocations needs some basic information: what
the collocation is, how can be recognized, how the collocation
behaves, what types of collocations are? etc. Their translation is
different from the translation of single words, it requires
certain knowledge of what collocation is and how it works. At this
stage the translator is able to translate and to produce a good
quality translation. Without this knowledge they would not be able
to translate correctly which would lead them to make a lot of
unnecessary mistakes. It is generally known that the task of the
translation involves loss in meaning due to many factors (poor
word choices, words with extended meanings, the different lexical
and grammatical systems between the two languages, etc). In the
case of collocations the translator should be very careful in
giving the precise TL equivalent. Translators should have a vast
knowledge of the source and target languages and their cultures,
as well as the strategies and norms in translation that allow the
translator to reproduce the writers imagery and style. Translators
should build their own memory bank of collocations which can be
recalled and activated when they need during the translation
process. Shakir & Fargal (1991, p. 4).
Collocations are found in all text types and all languages in a
variety of ways. People around the world apply collocations to
communicate their ideas, thoughts and feelings in their own way.
Even more these collocations reflect much about people themselves.
Helena Halmari reinforces this with the statement. It happens to
us to use words together with other words intuitively, without
recognizing that we are making unconscious choices of what
combinations go well together and which their co-occurrences are.
However there is some degree of ready-made combinations in our
minds to be used , they are also potential carriers of culture and
ideology (2004, p.202). If the use of collocations is important in
the production of a fluent, highly expressive, coherent, cohesive
and comprehensible language, it is logical then to consider that a
translator who implements more TL (target language) collocations
in the TT will result in the production of a more competent
translation, bringing thus a better quality than a translation
which implements fewer TL collocations.
In translating a text the translator faces many kinds of problems
in his attempt to transfer meaning from one source language into
another language since every language has its own naturalness, it
is unique and different to another which means that each language
has a certain system that does not exist in other languages. Abdul
Raof (2001) states that errors in the translation of lexical items
occur when language specific collocations are not well estimated.
This is because a collocation that might be acceptable in one
language can be unacceptable in another language. Since
collocations are often language specific it is hard to find the
correct translation of such expressions. Linguistic such as
Newmark and Bahumaid have confirmed that translators have to deal
with various problems of different kind in the translation of
collocations. These problems are closely related to differences in
cultural and linguistic collocability between the SL and the TT.
Lexemes for examples differ in their collocability from one
language to another and what collocates in one language does not
necessarily collocate in another. The most important point about
collocational meaning is that each lexeme makes an independent
contribution to the meaning of the whole collocation. Collocations
pose an enormous challenge in translation, especially if the
translator lacks the ability to identify and recognize such
collocational patterns. According to Maning and Schutz the best
way to distinguish between a collocation and a free combination
is to translate it. If the literal translation does not work, then
it is a collocation. One of the opportunities of translating
collocations and to avoid mistakes is to not translate it all. The
translator can use simplification or shortening the text ensuring
that information is not omitted from the original text.
3.3. Translation of literary texts
The pleasure of reading literary texts is something that many of
us want to share with others. As translation is considered to be
one of the main sources of communication, the need for translating
literary texts has increased. However the differencies between
cultures and languages bring to some restrictions and problems
translating these texts. Literary vocabulary not only has
denotative meaning (dictionary meaning), but also connotative
meaning (intended meaning) and Literary Translation is a term used
broadly to refer to the translation of literature which can be
described as an illusive reflection of real life, where words
replace actions (see Wales, 1989: 300). Literary translation is an
art involving the transposing and interpreting of creative works
such as novels, short prose, poetry, drama, comic strips, and film
scripts from one language and culture into another. It can also
involve intellectual and academic works like psychology
publications, philosophy and physics papers, art and literary
criticism, and works of classical and ancient literature. Without
literary translation, human thought and art would be free of the
souls of great minds and books. Literary translation is perhaps
considered to be the most difficult kind of translation with lot
of abundance of expressive means and concepts, high emotional
load, usage of obsolete expressions, archaisms, and a large number
of stylistic devices. The translator should have enough
imagination and creativity to render the complete sense, colors,
emotions and the effects of a literary text making it at the same
time clear and readable for a particular speaker. Translators of
literary texts create by their work a new, independent masterpiece
with all its special characteristics.
Holman and Beier (1998) show the relationship between the
creativity of a translator and the writer. The process of
translation is, of course, more restricted and less creative than
writing an original work as it has many constraints which limit
the translator in rewriting the original text. On the other hand,
writing an original work is by nature more creative than
translation due to the fact that the author is free from any
restrictions and thus can unleash their thoughts and feelings and
write as they wish. The translation of a literary text is the most
complicated of all types of written translation. Besides a perfect
understanding of both languages, the gift of words, a feel for the
language, the translator ought to have an artistic flair, the
talent of a writer or a poet. The quality in production is of
great importance. Translators usually dream of achieving an ideal
reproduction of the ST, but they often have to accept that not
everything can be translated exactly into different languages.
They do their best to produce an identical version of the SLT in
the TL, or a version in the TL as close as possible to the
original. Actually, translation is accomplished by choosing the
appropriate and idiomatic equivalents rather than choosing literal
and non-established equivalents.
Another feature of literary text is the style which is
considered one of the fundamental components of a literary text,
every writer has a literary style and his style is reflected in
his writing. Some authors say that a translation should reflect
the style of the original text while others say that a translation
should possess the style of the translator. A good translator
should have a complete knowledge of the source and target
languages, be able to identify with the author of the book or
poem, understand his culture and country, and employ a good method
for translating literary texts. The literary translator has to
take into account the beauty of the text, its style, the lexical,
grammatical and phonological features. Some of these may not be
the same in the target language. The aim of the translator is that
the quality of the translation be the same as the original text
without leaving out any of the content. he should interact with
the text’s words, which they examine to recognize their cultural
and semantic function; to know their meanings, and points which
need to be transferred.
Style makes the literary work challenging to read, it shapes the
reader's perception of the characters, the settings, the plot
lines and the author himself. Style is based on the sum of the
author's word choices, it is the literary element that describes
the ways that the author uses wordssuch as the author's word
choice, sentence structure, figurative language, and sentence
arrangement all work together to establish mood, images, and
meaning in the text. Consequently, literary translation must be
approached as “a kind of aesthetically-oriented which aims at
producing a target text intended to communicate its own form,
correspondent with the source text. (Burkhanov, 2003: 139).
The author uses various literary techniques to express their style
such as irony, symbolism, tone, and word play. Since collocations
are word choices, they are a feature of style. It is worth
mentioning that not all combinations are collocations. The best
way to distinguish between a collocation and a free combination is
to translate it into another language, if the literal or word for
word translation doesn’t work there is evidence that this is a
collocation
3.4. The translation of collocations in literary texts.
It is commonly known that the task of translation must involve
some kind of loss in meaning due to many factors (poor word
choices, words with extended meanings, the different lexical and
grammatical systems between the two languages, etc). Sarikas
(2006, p. 36) states that the basic loss when translating “is
reported to be on a continuum between overtranslation (increased
detail) and undertranslation (increased generalization) in the
translation task.” In our case, when translating collocations the
translator should be very careful in delivering the accurate
equivalent in the target language (TL). The interest in the
translation of collocations comes from their great importance in
language. They play an essential role in the coherence of the
structure of language. They also give language attraction and
special flavor which makes it more beautiful, more pleasant and
more extraordinary. The translation of collocations is an eternal
struggle to match the proper nouns with the proper verbs, the
proper verbs with the proper nouns, or the proper adjectives with
the proper noun. We all are aware that we spontaneously use
collocations in speeches or writings, either from experience,
dictionaries, from reading or listening to native speakers,
conversations etc. Thus collocations are recognized as a difficult
field not only for language learners but also for translators.
(Stubbs, 1995, p. 245).
The pleasure of reading literary texts is something that many of
us want to share with others. It is well known that translation is
considered to be one of the main sources of communication, thus
the need for translating literary texts has increased leaving
apart the cultural and language differences which bring to some
restrictions and problems in translating these texts. Literary
texts in general can be distinguish from other non-literary texts
because they include unique wording. The vocabulary used there
has not only has denotative meaning (dictionary meaning), but also
connotative meaning (intended meaning). Literature, as is widely
known is rich with metaphors and associations (connotative and
denotative), for this purpose literary translation is perhaps
considered to be the most difficult kind of translation.
Translators should distinguish between figurative and free
meaning. It is important to maintain the same connotative meaning
of SL collocation and TL by paraphrasing, expanding, using
synonyms or explaining. Landers (2001, p. 8) also discusses the
role of translating literary texts by mentioning some of the
competences that a literary translator should control: tone,
style, flexibility, inventiveness and ear for sonority and
humanity.
Beekman and Callow (1974) define collocational clashes and argue
that collocational clashes are the result of conflict of meaning
components. In a collocational clash there is a conflict of
meaning components within a text carried by both the grammar and
the lexical choices made. Larson (1984) even talks about
collocational clashes describing lexical collocational errors
committed by people who speak a language which is not their
mother-tongue. He adds that the translator must be alert to the
potential pitfall of collocational clashes.
Baker (1992) mentions that some problems and difficulties in
translation are related to collocations due to the attractive
effect of the SL text patterning, misinterpreting the meaning of
the SL collocation, the tension between accuracy and naturalness,
and the existence of culture-specific collocations. Jaber (2005,
p. 158-168) observes that there are eight translational methods
that deal with translating sentences and smaller units in literary
texts. One of these methods is literal translation, i.e.
translating word for word from the ST to the TT. It is not
considered a perfect method, as Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) argue
because it could be “unacceptable” giving contradictory or
inappropriate meaning to statements. This would lead to a fully
different style of language for example: turned pale-----u zverdh si limoni.
On the other hand, it could be helpful as Newmark advocates that
it could be a good method when literal translation means
translating meaning for meaning.For example: destroys the harmony-----
shkatëron harmoninë. Literal translation (word for word) is not
recommended in translating literature because it does not give the
TT the artistic color and effect of the original, this is because
translating literary texts is a special case and that literary
text has special features that distinguish it from other kinds of
texts. Jaber notices that collocations are widely used in literary
text such as novels and that the translator job is to deal with
them.
o Collocations that contain a noun and an adjective, such as a
fresh school in which the translator aims to find the accurate
adjective in the target language, such as shkollë e re
o Collocations that contain a verb and a noun such as becomes all
nose the translator aims to find the equivalent verb in the
target language such as merr frymë thellë me hundë
o Collocations that containan an adverb and adjective such as
quite magnificent in which the translator aims to find the
accurate target language equivalence such as shatngu në vend
o Collocations that contain noun and a noun such as mist of tears,
again the translator aims to find the accurate noun in the
target language, such as rrëke lotësh
As translation is defined by Touri (1980, p.200) as a kind of
activity that involves two languages and two cultural traditions
which are closely connected and makes translation possible, we
cannot pretend in absolute correspondence since two languages are
not identical either in meanings, phrases or sentences.
3.5. Strategies in translating collocations in literary texts.
The process of the translation of collocations has been carried by
linguists such as: (Newmark, 1988; Lorscher, 1991; Baker, 1992;
Vinay & Darbelnet, 1995). Newmark define translation as "a craft
consisting in the effort to replace a written message in one
language by the same message in another language". Later he
specified his definition by stating that translation is rendering
the meaning of a text into another language in the way that the
author considered the text. Their studies were focused on the
relationship within the strategies applied by translators and the
difficulties encountered in translation. Translation strategies
selected by the translator affect the meaning of the TT. They play
a vital role in delivering a complete and effective meaning in a
way that maintains the cultural and stylistic features of the
text. Translators play a major role in shaping the target text.
The decisions they make for which strategy to adopt contribute
largely to the final product of the translation.
In order to overcome the problem translators face when translating
collocations some strategies are needed. Among the famous pairs
methods of translation are Semantic and Communicative against the
traditonal Literal and Free methods. To Newmark (1981) semantic
translation is SLT-centered, whereas communicative translation is
TLT reader-oriented, seeking to produce an equivalent effect on
them. He makes a serious claim that "there is no one
communicative nor one semantic method of translating a text. A
translation can be more or less semantic – more or less
communicative, for it is quite hard to imagine how the same
sentence which is at the end one idea, can be translated half
semantically, half communicatively. The problem translators face
in the translation of collocations is finding the exact lexical
equivalents in TL, dealing with cultural aspects, conveying the
intended message and finding the proper strategy in order to
convey ST aspects in TL.
Equivalence (As-Safi,1996:11) is a bilingual synonymy or sameness
based on lexical universals and cultural overlaps. Baker (2005:77)
rightly maintains that equivalence is a central concept in
translation theory although there are certain small controversies
about the concept. Proponents define equivalence as relationships
between ST and TT that allows the TT to be considered as a
translation of the ST in the first place. Many theorists think that
translation is based on some kind of equivalence depending on the
rank (word, sentence or text level). Collocational equivalence is
defined as equality in content between ST and TT collocations
within a given context (sentential and situational). Thus in
instances when a translation is criticized as inaccurate or
inappropriate, this may refer to the translator's failure to
recognize a collocational pattern with a meaning different from
the sum of meanings of its elements.
The pedagogical approach states that if we have a direct
equivalent for a SL collocation there is no difficulty in
translation. We can talk about absolute equivalence if both
collocation of both languages are words with identical content. It
is widely accepted that to produce an acceptable, accurate or
appropriate TL equivalent for a SL counterpart poses a challenge
even to the most competent and experienced translator. Achieving
appropriate collocations in the target text Basil and Mason
declare has been always seen as one of the major problems a
translator faces, because SL interference may escape unnoticed and
as a conclusion ununnatural collocation will weaken the TT. The
translator’s tiresome task is due to the semantic arbitrariness of
collocations as explicated by the following examples. Nida
proposes two kinds of equivalence, Formal and Dynamic equivalence:
Formal equivalence pays more attention ST (to source text)
rather than TT, so it reveals as much as possible of the form
and content of the original message.
Dynamic equivalence looks at TT and makes it more natural for
the receptor. It has in focus the receptor response, which
mean that you find the closet natural equivalent to the
source language mesagge. In this way Dynamic equivalence is
proposed as a strategy in translation studies and seems to be
a very successful method of dealing with collocations in
literary works.
Lorscher has defined translation strategies as "conscious
procedures" with the aim of solving translation problems. Instead
Baker (1992, p 26) has pointed to translation strategies as
descriptions that treat "various types of non equivalence" The
most comprehensive and applicable set of translation strategies is
what Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) proposed for the sake of semantic
and communicative effect: borrowing, calque, literal translation,
transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation. Apart that
we can say that there are not fixed translation strategies, some
can be really helpful whereas others tend to be not so
beneficial. The search for the right collocation requires an
effort on the part of the translator. When they come across the
obstacle of not finding the corresponding TL equivalent for the SL
lexical item they refer to several strategies to overcome the
problems. We normally say in English “make a visit”, but not “perform a
visit”. Baker (ibid) also gives the example of the verb “drink” in
English which collocates naturally with liquids like “juice and milk”
but not with “soup”. All the above examples indicate that
collocations cannot be literally transferred from SL into TL.
Garcia, (1996) says that "different procedures for the
translation are implemented to achieve a successful transfer, when
difficulties in translation often become inevitable.
Finding the appropriate collocation in translation is a "continual
struggle" and the translator always tries to solve a thousand
small problems in a large context. One of the big mistakes
translators tend to make is adopting several strategies while
translating collocations such as: simplification, reduction,
synonymy, and paraphrasing. As Asqlan (1991, p. 4) notes “the
higher the degree of these strategies the less effective the
translation and the less natural the intended communication will
be.” Baker (1992, p. 46) consider that the main challenge which
the translator faces when translating collocations, idioms, and
fixed expressions consists of achieving an equivalence above the
word level. Translators should work hard to minimize translation
loss. Furthermore, in literary translation, mistranslations may
lead to a lexical impoverishment of the TT and obscure the
expressive purpose of the ST.
Literal Translation is concerned with translating individual words
more out of context than in context. Although we translate words
"words alone do not carry meaning" (Raffel, 1994: 4). We translate
words in context and context is of different types: referential,
collocational, syntactic, stylistic, semantic, pragmatic,
situational, cultural, etc. (Newmark, 1988: 73 ). Translators deal
more with ideas than words, and, in literary translation, they
deal among other with cultures (Landers, 2001: 72). Literal
translation is normally taken to mean an accurate translation of
meaning, no more no less. Everything is translated to a measure as
much as possible: no deletions, no additions, no unnecessary
exaggerations, no artificialities or groundless digressions. Thus,
literal translation is the accurate translation of meaning as
closely, directly and completely possible.
Chapter 4: Methodology
4.1. Introduction
Collocations in general pose tremendous challenge to translators if
translators do not have the required abilities to identify and recognize
this collocational patterns. The research done in this area shows that
lexical collocations in translation are of primary importance. Dealing
with translation of collocations especially in literary text is a matter
of word choice or style that translator uses to translate the proper
collocation. As we early mentioned it is not an easy way to translate
collocations but rather a difficult task to be handled. It is necessary
for the translator to possess good knowledge of the language, a
proficiency one and a mastery of it. The use of the proper method led to
a right choice and thus to a clear, meaningful collocation into the TT.
Analysing the three books, the original one and both translated versions
had been not only an easy task but a pleasure at the same time. I enjoyed
the novel, their translations as well as each of them in its own way.
The title themselves of the The picture of Dorian Gray is mysterious in what
it represent to the reader. The first is the picture painted by Basil
Hollward and the literary " picture" that Wilde creates here. Both of
these indicate the so called "real world" that we cant see in the world,
the truth of Dorians soul. The painting is at the center of the novel,
while Dorians physical beauty remains untouched, then he suddenly changes
horribly to reflect the corruption of his soul. The Portrait of Dorian
Gray is one of Oscar Wildes masterpiece. In essence the author had dared
to display the decay and all the artificiality of the system by strongly
condemning all the immorality that has ruined English society. The novel
tries to represent the inner world of the main character, Dorian Gray,
who is under the destructive influence of Lord Herry which characterise
all the interest,envy, corruption and immorality that cares for physical
beauty and not happiness. This novel reflects the depravity of English
aristrocatic society and the spiritual emptiness of this society.The
proficienct at which this novel is written is rare.
4.2. Materials (instruments of the styudy)
In my thesis I have taken into consideration the study of the
linguistic phenomenon known as collocation. The thesis aims at
analysing the translation of collocations in literary text from
English into Albanian. It makes use of the techniques of corpus
linguistics to account for frequencies of occurrence and
translation strategies. As a matter of fact one English literary
novel and two Albanian translations of it were chosen to be the
data for this study.
"The picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde (an Irish writer and
poet) it’s a novel, the genre belong to Ghotic,
philosophical,comedy of manners, it is written in English in 1890,
in London with setting(time1890s) and the setting place (London,
England), the tense in which the novel is written is Past tense.
Date of the first publication:
The first edition of the novel was published in 1890 in Lippincott’s
Monthly Magazine. A second edition, complete with six additional
chapters, was published the following year.
Publisher: The 1891 edition was published by ward, Lock & Company.
Themes: The purpose of art; the supremacy of youth and beauty; the
surface nature of society; the negative consequences of influence.
The novel is translated in two versions by different translators,
repectively the first book "Poretreti i Dorian Greit" is
translated by the translator Klodian Briçi (February, 2001),
published by publishing house " Naum Vqeilharxhi" and the second
version of "Portreti i Dorian Greit" is translated by Nikoleta
Kalldremxhi (January, 2006), published by the publishing house
"TOENA", second edition. The novel consists of 20 chapters (382
pages). Chapters 1-6 coresponding to pages (23-83) and chapters
12- 15 corresponding to pages (136-164) were chosen for analysis.
To have reliable findings and draw accurate conclusions I have
verified and analysed 1138 collocations corresponding to four
categories under the study. Respectively 745 count for adjective +
noun; 146 for adverb + adjective; 143 for verb + noun and 104 for
noun + noun.
.
4.3. Methodology
As mentioned early the study attempts to examine various
collocations along with their translations and demonstrate how
translators deal with them when transferring them to the target
language, what strategies are adopted and whether the target text
fulfills the linguistic and stylistic characteristics of the
collocations or not. Three questions are investigated:
What happens to collocations when they are translated?
How do translators deal with collocations?
What strategies do they adopt in translating collocations in
literary texts?
It is worth mentioning that English collocations will not be
equal, because transferring collocations from one language into
another is transferring from one linguistic system to another and
from culture to culture (Heliel, 2002:62). Collocations were
specified in the chapters ( source text). Collocations and their
translations were checked for their stylistic features and
strategies being used. The procedure was simple: I carefully read
all the source text and payed great attention to the selected
chapters, then I firstly read the translated version of the first
book that is that of Klodian Briçi and then proceeded with the
other version. At the same time i underlined all the lexical
collocations that I found in the ST and I divided them according
to their category. I also underlined all the translated versions
of collocations into the TTs. The easiest part consists of not
dealing with the translation of these collocations by my self,
but only with the detection of each category. I listed them in a
table to make the work easier and visible. While reading I noticed
the difference of both texts. I found the first book of (Klodian
Briçi) more interesting for the reasons i mentioned in this work.
The book is close and more faithful to original, the style of the
translator, his word choice makes the book more attractive for the
reader, more natural,comprihensible and you feel like you are
reading a TT novel. The number and percentage of collocations
translated by each strategy identified are calculated to rank them
according to their frequency. The most-used strategy is determined
as the most frequent strategy used in translating collocations in
literary texts. Finally, conclusions are drawn to provide a
general and informative view of strategies used to translate
collocations in literary texts as well as to provide
recommendations for how to deal with them.
4.4 Examples of Lexical collocations
Types of Collocations found in the translated literary work
Table 1: The translation of Adjective + Noun collocation from source text into two
respective target texts.
"The portrait of
Dorian Gray" by Oscar
Wilde
Adjective +Noun
(ST)collocation
"Portreti i Dorian
Greit" përkthyer nga
Klodian Briçi
"Portreti i Dorian
Greit" përkthyer nga
Nikoleta Kalldremxhi
Rich odour of roses Aromën e dëndur të
trëndafilave
Aromën e fortë të
trëndafilave
Fantastic shadows Hijëzimet e shkëlqyera Hijet e flatrave
The long unmoun grass Në barin gjatosh pirg Barit të lartë të
pakositshëm
Heavy scent of lilac Duhma e rëndë e jargavanëve Era e fortë e lilakut
Gracious and comely form Trajtës së hirëshme dhe
magjepsëse
Formën e bukur e të hijshme
Curious dream ëndrra kundërshtjellëse Ëndërra misterioze
The only place I vetmi vend I vetmi vend
odd chaps Ç njerëz të mykur Krijesa të çuditshme
young man Djelmoshat e rinj Poetët e rinj
rugged strong face Fytyrë me rrudha të thella Omitted
young adionis adionisi riosh Adionisit të ri
Lear ned proffesions zanate Në çdo fushë
Silly habit Zakon i marrë Duket budallallëk
Extraordinary fellow Mik i jashtëzakonshëm Tip i pazakontë
White daisies Luledelet bardhake Luleshqerrat e bardha
Pink petalled daisy Luledele që i kishte petalet
ngjyrë karafili
Luleshtrydhe me petale të
trëndafilta
Elderly ladies Zonjat plakaruqe Zonjat plakaruqe
Huge price Një shumë të mirë Një dorë të mirë lekësh
Dainty silver case Kutizë prej argjendi Kutia delikate e
fildishtë
Tedious luncheon Drekën e lehtë Drekën e mërzitshme
Silly marriages Martesat e pamenda Martesa të çmenduraBrute force Kur forca përdoret mizorisht Ti rezistoj brutalitetit të
forcësLight summer wind Puhia e lehtë e beharit Puhiza e lehtë e erësBeautiful nature Natyrë tërheqëse Natyrë e butë
Long bamboo seat Ndenjëse të gjatë prej bambuje
Poltron bambuje
Tall laurel bush Kaçubeje të gjatë dafine pemëPolished leaves Gjethet e shndritshme Gjethe të pastraLittle golden white-feathered disk
Fushës së vockël ngjyrë ari me push bardhak
Zemrës së lules
Heavy lilac blooms Lulet e rënda të jargavanit Boçhet e lilakut të rënduaraLanguid air Ajrin e thatë omittedHer Brown gauze wings Krahët e saj tejdukshëm Flatrat e hollaPoor artists Artistët e gjorë Artistët e gjorëPointed brown bear Mjekrën ngjyrë kafe mjekrënRomantic spirit Frymë romantike Shpirt romantik
Silent amuzement Heshtjen zbavitëse Kënaqësi e heshturBeautiful nature natyrë e bukur Tip i këndshëmMomentary Japanese effect Ndikim I përkohshëm Japonez (Për një moment) të krijonin
një efekt të një mjedisi Japonez
Pallid jade -face Çehren e fytyrës verdhacuke Fytyrat e zbehta dhe verdhacuke
Dim roar Buçima e mbytur Zhurma e mërzitshmeHuge overdress dowagers Vejushat e veshura deri në
grykëVejushat e pispillosura
Tear-stained eyes Me sytë e njollosur nga çurgët e lotëve
Me lot në sy
Mere personality personaliteti Thjesht bukuriaExquisite sorrows Brengat më të thella Hidhërime të bukuraGigantic tiaras Diadema vigane Kurora gjigandeCrisp gold hair Flokët kishin ngjyrën e arit
të qartëKaçurrelat delikatë biondë
Sulky moods turivarurit Nuk është në orë të miraRose-white boyhood Plot gjallëri Adoleshencë e papërlyerWilful paradox Paradoksin kryeneç Paradoks i stërholluarDreamy languorous eyes Sytë ëndërrimtarë e të
lodhurSytë ëndërrimtarë dhe indiferent
Rebellious curls Krelat e ndërkryera Kaçurrelat rrebeleGilded threads Flokët e praruar Flokët e verdhaVisible symbol Simbol I ri ShekullGreen and white butterflies Flutura me ngjyrë të blertë
e të bardhëFlutura jeshile
The long palette knife Paletën gjatarushe Thikë piktoriAbsurd fellows Miq të pakuptueshëm Njerëz të çuditshëmReal-colour element Elementi I vërtetë bojatisës E vetmja gjuhë e vërtetëRough shooting coat Shilte e ashpër e bërë me
lëkurë kafshëshPallto të trashë gjahu
Bushy white eyebrows Vetullat plot lesh të bardhë Vetullat e trasha e të bardha
Penniless young fellow Djalosh riosh pa asnjë kacidhe në xhep
Djalë pa asnjë dyshkë
Poor chap Djaloshi skamnor I shkreti djalëBad business ( një punë e tillë )Qelbej
erëNjë dreq punë
Proper hands Dërrasë të kalbur Në duar të miraSombre hall Sallë e pandriçuar Një si tip holli meksikanFacile excuse Shfajsim të rëndomtë Justifikim sa për sy e faqeUnpardonable error Gabim i pafalshëm OmittedDelightful theory Çteori e shkëlqyer Kam shumë frikëLong tussore-silk curtains Perde me xhufka Perde të gjata të mëmdafshtaExtraordinary improvisation Improvizimi i pazakontë Improvizimi i mrekullueshëmA harsh word Një fjalë e vetme Nuk dua të bëj sherrPerfect host Bujtinë e mrekullueshme Zot shtëpie The old gentleman Zotëria plakush PlakuInummerable cigarettes Një numër të jashtëzakonshëm
cigareshCigare pa fund
Dark crescent-shaped eyebrows
Vetullat e tij të errta dhe leshtore
Vetullat e tij të zeza e të trasha
Awkward silence Heshtjen e sikletshme Qetësinë e mërzitshmeFaint odour of frangipanni Aromë të mbytur të jaseminit Erën e parfumitDecent society Shoqërive të pahijshme shoqëriMad curiosity Me kurreshtje të marrë Me kuriozitetSordid sinners (me) mëkatarë të fëlliqur Mëkatarët e këqinjSplendid sins Mekatet qejfbërëse Mëkatet e mrekullueshmeGrimy streets Rrugë të lerosura Rrugicave të errëtaBlack grasseless squares Sheshe të errëta pa bar Shesheve të pagjelbëruaraAbsurd little theatre Teatër i vogël pa pikë vlere Teatër i vogël qesharakHideows jew Një jude Çifut i shëmtuarAmazing waistcoat Jelekun më të çutditshëm Jelek tejet qesharakGreasy ringlets Unaza të lyrosura Baluke të lëpiraIdle classes Klasat përtace Klasat e lartaHorrid little private box Arkë e vockël Llozhë private e shëmtuar"The idiot boy" Djali I luajtur mendsh Idioti(tituj filmash)Wretched hole Vrimë mjerane i ndyrë(vend)Cracked piano Piano që krakëllinte Piano çalamaneStout elderly gentleman Zotëri kaprroç Plakaruq I shëndoshëCorked eyebrows Me vetulla të ashpra Me një palë vetulla harkWild passion of violins Dashurohej pas zjarrmisë së
violinaveKishte pasionin e ndezur të violinës
Dainty cap Kësulë të bukur Kapel kalorësi
Painted faces Makiazh i fytyrës Surrat të tualetosurCharming room Dhomë e hijshme Dhomë e këndshmeTiny stain-wood table Tryezë e lustruar Tavolinë e vogël prej
mëndafshi dhe druriCurious woman Grua që të ngjall kërshëri Grua kuriozePerfect mania fiksim Kishte një maniThin lips buzët BuzëtA long tortoise-shellpaper knife
Presë letrash në trajtën e breshkës
Thikë letrash prej lëkure gjarpri
Emotional coloured- life ofthe intellect
Jetë emocionale lajlelule tëintelektit
Jetën shumë- ngjyrëshe të emocioneve të intelektit
Brown agate eyes Vetullat e tij të vijëzuara të syve
Në sytë e tij kafe të axhituar
Beautiful face Sytë e tij të bukura Fytyrë e bukurWorn chair Karrigia e vjetëruar Karrigia e rrjepurThe Wordy silence Moshtënia e fjalëve Kjo qetësi
Dreadful old bear Derr i egjër Arush plakSwell people Njerëzit me sqimë Njerëzit që mbajnë erë të mirëA brilliant marriage një burrë I shkëlqyer Një martesë e shkëlqyerImaginary gallery Portreti imagjinar Galeri imagjinareThe Heavy youth Të riun e vramur rininëWicked, red-shirted bushrangers
Rojet e kufirit që ishin të ligj dhe që mbanin këmisha të kuqe
Kthetrat e kaçakëve
Smart people Njerëzinë mendjemprehtë Njerëzit e veshur bukurGold-fields Fushat e arta Minierat e aritNice sheep-farmer Dhiar i shkëlqyer Fermer i këndshëmA great opportunity Një ndjenjë e re zhgënjimi Shanci i madh
The tables represent the examples of adj + noun collocations
found in the literary work of Oscar Wilde " The portrait of
Dorian Gray". These kinds of lexical collcoations are
translated in two different versions from two different
Albanian translators. In the first line are presented the
types of lexical collocations (adj + n) taken from the
source text. In the second line are given the translations of
adj + n collocations from the first book tanslated by Klodian
Briçi, and the third line represents the second version of
translated collcoations by Nikoleta Kalldremxhi.
Table 2: The case of Adverb + adjective translation from the two translated versions
"The picture of DorianGray" by Oscar WildeAdverb + Adjective (ST) collocation
"Portreti i Dorian Greit"
përkthyer nga Klodian
Briçi
"Portreti i Dorian
Greit" përkthyer nga
Nikoleta Kalldremxhi
Too large Shumë e madhe Shumë e madhe Too vulgar Tepër e trashë E rëndomtëPerfectly hideous Hileqarë Sa të shpifurAbsolutely delightful Të mrekullueshme Gjithmonë në formëAwfully foolish Tmerrësisht luajtur nga
binarëtTmerrsisht i çmendur
Absolutely necessary Domosdoshmërisht të nevojshëm
Obsolutisht të nevojshme
Thoroughly ashamed Që të vjen turp Të vjen turpAbsolutely inseparable E pandashme Të pandaraQuite serious Me tërë mend seriozishtQuite magnificent E shtangu në vend E paparëAbsolutely necessary Është bërë pjesë e
domosdoshmeKaq I nevojshëm
Entirely new manner Një lloj të ri, stli Një formë tjetërPerfectly cold and perfectly indiferent
(të sillesh) Plotësisht ftohtë dhe me mospërfillje
Komplet i ftohtë dhe indiferent
Horribly thoughtless Flet pa u menduar fare Tmerrësisht i pakujdeshëmHorribly freckled i mbushur plot me quka Me quka të tmerrshmeToo frightened Kam frikë Kam shumë frikëVery pressing Shumë harbut Shumë bindës
Horribly dull Me të vërtetë e bezdishme Shumë e mërzitshmeDreadfully tedious Jashtëzakonisht e frikshme MerzitenStrangely bright Shndrisnin në një mënyrë të
çuditshmeShkëlqim i çuditshëm
Dimly conscious Gjysëm i vetëdijshëm Gjysëm koshientIntensely interesed Ju ndez) interesi keqazi Shumë i interesuarPerfectly still Edhe pak Komplet i paluajtshëmHorribly hot Nxehtësirë e tmerrshme Shumë nxehtëAbsolutely fascinating E magjepste pa masë Kishte diëka shumë
tërheqëse Awfulli obliged Ti ishe shkaktari që më
detyroveTë jam shumë miënjohës
Hardly care Me zor sa Nuk ma ha mendjaPerfectly right Plotësisht të drejtë Plotësisht të drejtëA little silly Një grimë budalla Pak budallaExtremely young Në kulmin e rinisë Sa i riExtraordinarily beautiful girl
Grua me bukuri të jashtëzakonshme
Një vajzë me një bukuri të jashtëzakonshme
Excessively anxious me ankth Të eturaDreadfully dowdy Vejushë frikacake Kaq e shëmtuarIntesely earnest manner Zell i papërmbajtshëm Me një ton mjaft solemnExtremely civil Jashtzakonisht të qytetruar Janë shumë të gjenduraAbsolutely reasonable Shumë të arsyeshëm Shumë të arsyeshëmQuite vexed Do të bie në qafë Pothuajse e mërziturTerribly morbid Butësi e tmerrshme Tmerrësisht e trishtueshmeTerribly grave Tmarrsisht të mëdha Shumë e mërzitshmeDreadfully demoralising Të mpakni zemrën Tmerrsisht demoralizuesWonderfully beautiful face Fytyrë me të vërtetë manhitëse Ke një fytyrë të
mrekullueshmeSickly aims Ndihmat që të shtihen
sëmundjetQëllime të kota
Terribly enthralling E tmerrshme Tmerrësisht skllavërueseExtremely interesing people
Popull me të vërtetë interesant
Njerëz shumë interesant
Extremely dangerous Tepër I rrezikshëm Shumë I rrezikshëmToo romantic Tepër romantik Shumë romatik
Quite cosmopolitan kozmopolit kozmopolitanëQuite different Shumë të ndryshme Të ndyshmeQuite charmed Shumë I kënaqur Shumë I lumturuarCompletely satisfied Plotësisht e kënaqur Është e lumturFairly full Mbushur plot Ishin të zënaQuite empty Ishin të lira Bosh(radha ishte)Quite obvious Tashmë dihet Duken qartëTerribly disappointed Jashtmase I zhgënjyer Tmerrësisht I zhgënjyerStrongly recomended Që ua rriste vlerën deri në
qiellI vlerësoi shumë
Quite uncoscious Gati të pavetëdijshme Plotësisht e pavetëdijshmeInfinitely mean E pafundme E zymtëAbsolutely and entirely dive
Krejtësisht hyjnore hyjnore
Dreadfully late Shumë me vonesë Jashtzakonisht vonëTerribly excited Tmerrsisht në ankth Tmerrsisht i emocionuarPersonally delightful Të lumtur magjepsësPerfectly unintersting Skanë pikë interesi OmittedAbsolutely fascinating Të shtangin duke të magjepsës magjepsësFinely bred I hijshëm OmittedToo shabby I kam rrobat e zhubrosura Jam i rreckosur
The second table represents the second type of translated
collocation adverb + adjective and their respective translated
versions. The first line represents the collocation type, the
second line represents the first translated version and the third
line represents the second translation versions.
Table 3: The case of Veb + Noun collocation and their translation
from both translated versions
"The picture of DorianGray" by Oscar WildeVerb + noun (ST) collocation
"Portreti I Dorian
Greit" përkthyer nga
Klodian Briçi
"Portreti I Dorian
Greit" përkthyer nga
Nikoleta Kalldremxhi
Catch the gleam Kapte rrezet Të shihteGave rise U pat dhënë hov U ngritënElevated his eyebrows Ngriti vetullat Ngriti vetullatTo gain a reputation (Per të) fituar bujë (Për të )Fituar famëDestroys the harmony Shkatëron harmoninë Shkatëron harmoninëBecomes all nose Merr frymë thell me hundë Gjithçka bëhet me hundëChill our intelligence Freskoj mendjen Freskoj mendjetShrug your shoulders Mbledh supet Mbledh supetBring ruin U bëjnë keq të tjerëve Sjellin problemTo love secrecy Ta dua me gjithë shpirt
sekretinTë dua në fshehtësi
Leave town Lëshoj qytezën Largohem nga qytetiShook some bloosoms Lëkundi ca lule Shkundi ca luleQuit the room Të largohesha nga dhoma Mbath( për tia mbathur)Pulling the daisy Duke shtypur luledelen Mori një lule në dorëTreats her guests Trajton mysafirët Trajton mysafirëtPlays the piano I bie pianos I bie pianosBecome friends U bënë miq U bëmë miqShook his head Tundi kokën Tundi kokënDetesting my relations Përbuzur mardhëniet e mia Të urrej të afërmit e miMake an ass Luan mendsh Bën ndonjë budallallëkTapped the toe Ciku gishtin Goditi me majën e këpucësRecreate life Të krijoj rishtazi jetë Jeta më zbulon atë që..Charm his vanity Për të ngjallur magjepsjen
e tijPër të përmbushur vakumin
Pay attention Mos e kthe kokën Vër veshinGrow sick sëmuret SëmuretCure the soul Shërojë shpirtin Shërojë shpirtinCharm the world (Botën) e lë gojëhapur nga
habiaMagjeps njerëzit
Striking the table Duke ndukur tryezën Duke goditur tavolinën me grusht
Turned his steps Drejtoi hapat në drejtim të U kthye në drejtim të
Feed the hungry U japin të hanë barkzgorpurve
Ushqejnë të urriturit
Clothe the beggar Mbathin me rrobë lypsit Japin rroba për lypsitTurn your head Ktheje kokën një grimë Ktheje pak kokënTragic survval Mbijetesë tragjike Ekzistencën evtevetes
Monstruous laws Ligjet e përbindshme Ligjet e padrejtëHeard a step U dëgjuan ca hapa Ndjen zhurmën e hapaveShook his head Pohoi me kokë Tundi kokënShutting the door Mbylli derën Duke mbyllur derënGain reputation Të të respektojnë Të fitosh emërCommit one mistake Bejnë një gabim Bëjnë të njëjtin gabimSucking the poison Thithin ethshëm helmin Duke thithur helminRide in the park Kalërojnë në park Shkojnë në parkBecome bankrupt falimentojne FalimentojnëPay compliments Të përgëzojë Ditka të bëka kompimentTo stirr the dust Të çukërrmojë Tu përziej pluhurinWhispered the girl Përshpëriti çupa Përshpëriti vajzaTossed her head Tundi kokën Tundi kokënRules life Ka marrë në dorë jetën tonë Do të kujdeset për neStirred the fold Ia hodhi përpjetë palat I përzjeu palatCaught the melody Kapën melodinë Kapnin melodinë
The third table represents verb + noun collocation type. In the
first line is presented the verb + noun collocation, in the second
line is given its first translation from the first book and in the
third line is given the second version of translation from the
second book.Verb + noun collocations in this literary work seems
to be easy enough for both translators.
Table 4: The case of Noun + Noun collocation and the translated versions from both books.
"The picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar WildeNoun +Noun (ST) collocation
"Portreti I Dorian Greit"
përkthyer nga Klodian
Briçi
"Portreti I Dorian
Greit" përkthyer nga
Nikoleta Kalldremxhi
Public excitement Shqetësim ZhurmëSmile of pleasure Pasqyrim I vërtetë Buzëqeshje kënaqësieMode of exaggeration Një mënyrë e tepëruar BarrëDearest friend Mikun më të shtrenjtë Mikun më të mirëDearest riend Mik për kokë Miku im më I mirëPenny newspapers Gazeta Gazeta të vogëlaDivorce court Gjykatë shkurorzimi Gjykatë divorciDignity of labour Dinjiteti i punës Dinjiteti I punësNatural passions Pasioneve të natyrshme Pasion I natyrshëmLook of joy hare ndjenjë gëzimiMist of tears Rrëke lotësh perde e purpurt lotëshChapter 3 Translation 1 Translation 2
A pack of radicals Lukuni radikalësh Ishin të shitur tek radikalët
A good deal Një thes me gjëra OmittedA pot of money Poçe me të holla Goxha paraHymn book Libër psalmesh Libër lutjeshGrave shake Vdekje me kokë Duke Tundur kryet rëndëPraise of folly Lëvdimi i çmendurisë Çmimi i marrëzisëWreath of ivy Dredhkat e shermashekut Gjerdanin e jaseminit
Hills of life Çukat e jetës Kodrat e jetësIn mock of despair Duke pëbuzur dëshpërimin Duket si vetë pafajësiaSecrets of life Të fshehtat e jetës Sekretet e jetësThe separation of spirit Ndarja e shpirtit omittedThe mist of a dream Mjegullina e një ëndërre Vello ëndërreThe Marble Arch Harku I mermertë Te Marble RickThe rumble of omnibuses Zhaurimën e koloshinave Zhurma e tramvajit
Noun + noun pattern is the case of collocation that has been used
least in this literary book considering that noun + noun
collocations are very useful in literary works. Again the first
line represent the noun + noun collocation, the second line gives
the first translated version from the first book (Klodian Briçi)
and the third line gives the second translated version from the
second book(Nikoleta Kalldremxhi).
Table 1. Frequency of collocation type in the ST
Type of collocation Frequency of
collocation type
(times)
Frequency of
collocation type in
(%)
adjective + noun 745 65%
adverb + adjective 146 13 (12.8)
%
verb + noun 143 13 (12.5)
%
noun + noun 104 10 %
1.138 (total)
The table represents types of collocations and the frequency for
each category. Ten (10) of twenty (20) chapters were taken into
consideration for this study. As the table shows the highest
number of collcoations in this work is that of adjective + noun
with 745 cases in total and the lowest number is that of noun +
noun with 104 cases. The frequency for each category is expresssed
in percentage.
Graphic: The frequency of collocations type in the ST
The graphic below represent the frequency of the most occurred
collocation type. The blue colour shows the highest number of
adjective + noun collocation, the adverb + adjective collocation in red
colour, verb + noun in green colour and the last in violet colour
is the noun + noun collocation.
Frequency of collocation type
adjective + noun collocationadverb + adjective collocationverb + noun collocationnoun + noun collocation
Graphic 1: The frequency of collocation type
4.5 Analysis of the collcoations
As Chesterman and Wagner 2002:5 state:
One of the best contributions translation scholars can make to the
work of professional translators is to study and then demonstrate
the links between different translation decisions or strategies,
and the effects that such decisions or strategies seem to have on
clients, readers and cultures, both in the past and in the
present, under given conditions. For sure we can state that the
translation strategies selected by the translator affect the
meaning of the TT. Translation strategies play an essential role
in delivering a complete and effective meaning in a way that
maintains the cultural and stylistic features of the text.
Translators play a major role in shaping the target text. The
decisions they make as to which strategy to use contribute mostly
to the final product of the translation.
The strategies used in translating collocations in both
target texts.
Literal
This strategy is SL based strategy in which the translator simply
translates the words without taking into consideration the
cultural aspect. Literal translation means to adopt the denotative
meaning. It means to transfer the utterance from the source text
into a syntactically and idiomatically appropriate target language
utterance where the translator’s task is restricted
This strategy is almost used in all categories of collocations but
the highest number of usage results in adjective + noun, although
most cases are found at verb + noun collocations. Here almost all
collocations are translated literally in both texts. The
translations are nearly the same apart from some cases that don’t
affect the meaning. These collocations are quite recognizable.
ST
T1 T2
destroys the harmony shkatëron harmoninë shkatëron harmoninëplay the piano i bie pianos i bie pianoscurious dream ëndërra kundërshtjellse ëndërra misteriozeShook his head tundi kokën tundi kokënRomantic spirit frymë romantike shpirt romantikcure the soul shëroj shpirtin shëroj shpirtin
other examples of literal translation
A dangerous theory Teori e rrezikshme Teori e rrezikshmeCharming room dhomë e hijshme dhomë e këndshmeTerribly proud tmerrsisht krenare shumë krenareLuxurious arm-chair kolltuk luksoz kolltuk luksoz
Dignity of labour dinjiteti i punës dinjiteti i punës
These are cases of collocations that are translated nearly in the
same way in two different novels. We can either call them
transparet collocations. They are easily recognisable collocations
and have primary meaning.
ExplicitationVinay and Darbelnet define explicitation as “the process of
introducing information into the target language which is present
only implicitly in the source language, but which can be derived
from the context or the situation”(Klaudy, 2001, p. 80). This
strategy is regarded as some kind of addition, but it is a more
specific concept since addition in general does not necessarily
mean that what is added is implicit in the source text. One of the
reasons that explicitation is used in translation is to make up
for the loss of meaning or to have a more target language-oriented
structure. Furthermore, explicitation is used to make implicit
information in the ST explicit in the TT. Explicitation can
indicate the translator’s intervention by deciding to add one word
or more to the collocation. This is probably to make the context
and situation clear.
For example:
The ST adj + n collocation A curtained picture is translated in the
first book as një pikturë që i kishin hedur përsipër një perde të trashë. We
notice that in the first translation the translator has tried to
give a broad explanation for the ST collocation, the explicitation
stand at the adjective "curtained" meaning a picture that has a
curtain hanging across it and translated it would sound vë perde ose
mbuloj. While the second translation has translated the collocation
and has remained faithful to ST. Një pikturë e mbuluar.
Great vein if translated literally would be vena e madhe ose kryesore,
instead the translator has choosen to explain so to add more words
in the target text translating it as vena që është pas bulës së veshit,
making us to understand better and to stress the importance and
the position of this vein that results in an immediate death such
was that of Basil(The friend of Dorian Gray and painter of his
picture).
Other examples are:
ST Translation 1 Translation 2Empty bookcase Një raft shumë të madh librash bosh
Një raft librash bosh
Great vein Vena që është pas bulës së
veshit Prapa qafës
Silent houses Shtëpitë që kishin rënë në heshtje
Dyert e qeta të shtëpive
Murdered man Njeriut që kishte vrarë me duart e tij
i vdekuri
Long fantastic arms Krahët që i mbante të hapura sa gjatë-
gjerë Krahët e gjatë e të ngurosur
EquivalenceCases of equivalence are a good deal. Equivalence is when
something is translated into another language and has the same
cultural function. Equivalence in translation studies has a
different meaning than the one that is used here as a translation
strategy. According to Kenny, equivalence is “the relationship
between a source text (ST) and a target text (TT) that allows the
TT to be considered as a translation of the ST in the first place”
(1998, p. 77) . Also, Jakobson discusses the notion of equivalence
in meaning and states that when we translate from one language to
another, we cannot get a full equivalence of what he called a
“codeunit” (Munday, 2008, p. 37) in the other language. So
equivalence means to achieve an equal level of meaning and
structure between the two texts. Here equivalence is not reached
by both translations at the same time.The first translator has
found an equivalence në lulen e moshës for the ST rose-red youth. If
translated literally it would be rini e kuqe si trëndafili. Rose-red
describes the youth that is like a rose that has just began to
florish, it is young, fresh and full of vitality.
ST Translation1 Translation 2rose-red youth në lulen e moshës në rininë e trëndafiltëStrangely calm Se prishi gjakun fare Çuditërisht i qetëextraordinary piece of luck çfat i madh çfarë fati
tarnished name njolllos emrin nam i keq
smart society shoqërinë e të zgjuarve në pozita të shëndosha
in a hard clear voice prerazi me një zë të lartë të qartë
AdaptionThis technique replaces a ST cultural element with one from the
target culture.It is mainly used for plays and poems. Adaptation
occurs when something specific to one language culture is
expressed in a totally different way that is familiar or
appropriate to another language culture. It is a shift in cultural
environment.
The ST collocation of " a dutch silver spirit case" translates in the
first translation as tabakaja hollandeze prej argjendi. This is the case
of an adaption because the noun case which correspond to a box,
container or even a situation is translated as tabakaja in the first
translation while in the second as shishe e hapur Gjermane pijesh e
argjendtë. The adjective dutch is given as hollandezët and is right
because it is related to the Netherlands while in the second
version it is given as gjermanët. Thus both translators has used
adaption as a strategy by giving a totally different version.
ST T1 T2dotted pomegranates Kishte ngjyrën e shegëve e mbuluar me lule
Terrible distinctness Një trajtë të llahtarshmeSkena të tmerrshmeHorrible thoughts Duke arritur në përfundimin omittedBlack cleft of precipice Të çarë zioshe të ndonjë gremine Në bregun e mprehtë
të një fatkeqsie të madhe
Lets see how adjective + noun collocations are translated
from one book into another.
We notice a deviance from the ST especially in the second
translation. In the first example the collocation "wonderful
heiress" if translated in a literal way would be "trashgimtaren e
mrekullueshme" but the translator in the first book has chosen
the adjective "fat" that does not correspond to that of the
original. Nevertheles the translation result a good one, this
heiress that is wanderful is also a lucky one.
The second translator has used only the noun"
bukuroshen"omitting thus the adjective in the given
collocation. Apart that, even the noun heiress is not a
corresponding one to the ST. To replace "heiress" with "
bukuroshen" means not being faithful to the original but
adopting it. It is important in the ST to stress the noun
"heiress"and not to focus only in her appearance.
ST T1 T2 wonderful heiress trashgimtaren me fat bukuroshen
In the other example derr i egjër has nothing to do with that of
the ST. In the second translation dreadful is the adjective for
i fikshëm while old bear for arush plak. The second translation is
closer to the ST with the exception of not expressing the
adjective dreadful. The first translation has used the noun derr
for bear and the adjective wild for dreadful and old giving thus
the translation of derr i egjër.We notice how the translator has
adopted the ST collocation into the TT.
ST
Translation 1 Translation 2
dreadful old bear derr i egjër arush plak
Transposition
To change a grammatical category from ST into TL.
The collocation strangely melancholy is an adverb + adjective
collocation. The first translation has given as dëshpërim i
thellë, this is the case of an equivalence but from the shift
point of view the adverb strangely has changed into an adjective
i thellë instead of keeping the adverb and writing çuditërisht.
Huge window in the first translation is translated as dritare e
stërmadhe while in the second translation dritaret e mëdha. We
notice a change from singular into plural in the second
translation.Window transalted as dritaret. Other
examples:Intellectual power. The first translation has translated
it as intelekti i fuqishëm. The adjective intellectual has been changed
into a noun intelekti, while the noun power has been changed into
an adverb i fuqishëm.The second translation pak a shumë inteligjent
has only changed the noun power into an adverb pak a shumë. The
cases of shifts being their noun into verbs or adjective into
adverbs or singular forms into plural have not affected the
meaning of the target text rather they have made it more
challenging.
Deletion
This strategy is also used in the translation of
collocations. It is mostly used in the second translation.
The translation is omitted, it is not given. Honestly, this
kind of omission is not serious, meaning that it is not
overused, so it does not affect the meaning of the target
text.
Deletion is found to be of two types:
1. Full deletion, which means the whole collocation, is
dropped, i.e. providing no
translation. Rascally aventurier is translated in the first
translation as horr aventurier, while the second translation has
fully omitted this collocation. Examples:
ST Translation 1 Translation 2 Horrid places vise që të kallin datën omitted fashionable manner mënyrën e tyre magjepsëse omitted unpardonable error gabim i pafalshëm omitted excellent authority burim i besueshëm omitted patent leather boots çizme prej lëkure të shndritshme omitted rugged strong face Fytyrë merrudha të thella Omitted
2. Partial deletion is when one element (or more) of the
collocation is dropped while
transferring the remaining elements, as the deleted part does
not affect the whole
meaning of the original collocation. For example: We notice
that mostly in the second translation collocations are
partially omitted. White tie is translated by the first
translator as kravatën e bardhë while the second translator has
given only the noun kravatën,omitting thus the adjective white-
(e bardhë).
ST T1
T2
white tie kravatën e
bardhë kravatën
the old gentleman zotëria plakush
plaku
common gardener kopshtar
kopshtar i zakonshëm
Horrid ship anije e
frikshme anije
Again the example below is exact, meaning that it explain the
kind of society the author is speaking which is very
important for that time in London. An indecent society
translated as shoqëri e pahijshme while the second translation
gives just the word "shoqëri" thus it does not explain what
kind of society it is, while in the ST it is specified that
it is the kind of " an indecent" society, explaining better
the period time in London. These examples ilustrate that the
second translation omits words that are present in the source
text.
ST Translation 1
Translation 2
Indecent society shoqëri të pahijshme shoqëri Mad curiosity me kureshtje tëmarrë me kuriozitet The old gentleman zotëria plakush plaku Old gentle man zotnia bablok plaku
Transliteration
In the texts we find also some cases of transliteration,
where the word is not translated but it
is given as it is pronounced.
ST bitter herbs is translated as herbet e hidhura, thus the noun
herbs is transliterated, not translated in barëra.
ST the heavy scent of the lilac is translated as era e fortë e liliakut.
Again the ST noun lilac is transliterated liliakut instead of
translated it as jargavanëve.
Silver Faun is brought as fauni prej argjendi. The translator has
choosen to not translate the noun faun which is an ancient
Roman God that has the body of a man and with legs and horns
of a goat. The cases of transliteration are in a low number
and does not have any effect in the meaning of both
translations.
Numbers and percentages of strategies used in translatingcollocations for each target text:
Table 2TRANSLATION 1 TRANSLATION 2
Strategy Number of collocations
Percentage Strategy Number Percentage
Literal 292 49% Literal 279 51%Explicitation
93 15.5% Adaption 118 22%
Equivalence
84 14% Deletion 48 9%
Adaption 76 13% Equivalence
44 8%
Transposition
35 6% Transposition
26 5%
Deletion 11 2 Explicitation
23 4%
Transliteration
3 0.5 Transliteration
6 1%
594(total)
544 (total)
Translation 1Literal tr.ExplicitationEquivalnce AdaptationTransposition DeletionTransliteration
Graphic 1 Frequency of strategy types in target text nr. 1
This table represents the frequency of each strategy used in the
first translation. For each of the given colour is represented
each of the strategies, ranging from literal with blue clour which
is also the most used strategy in this translation,explicitation
with red colour, grren is equivalence,slight green transposition,
deletion is orange coloure and at the end is deletion in blue
light colour.Even though are used the same strategies they differ
in their ranking.
Translation 2Literal tr.AdaptionDeletionEquivalenceTranspositionExplicitation
Graphic 2: Frequency of strategy types in target text nr. 2
This table represents the frequency of each strategy used in the
second translation. The blue colour indicates the literal strategy
wich is the preceding one, then the red colour represents the
adaption method which is considered in high occurrence in the
second translation.Cases of equivalence are lower they are
indicated by the violet colour.The other strategies are as they
are shown in the graphic, the blue light is the transposition, the
orange colour is explicitation which is not used to much in this
translation and the last is transliteration.
Numbers and percentages of strategy types used in translating collocations for both target texts: Table 3
Types of strategies in translating collocations
LiteralExplicitationEquivalenceAdaption TranspositionDeleletionTransliteration
Strategy Number ofcollocations
Percentage
Literal 571 50.1%Explicitation 116 10.2%Equivalence 128 11.2%Adaption 194
17%Transposition 61 5.3%Deletion 59 5.2%Transliteration
9 1%
1138(total)
Graphic 3: Frequency of strategy types in both target texts
The table above (table 2) represents the total number of each
strategy used in the translation of collocation found in the
literary text. They are listed according to their frequency. The
first line represents the strategies, numbers and percentages of
the translated collocations from the first translator of the
portrait of Dorian Gray (Klodian Briçi) while the second line
represents the strategies, numbers and percentages of translated
collocations from the second translator (Nikoleta Kalldremxhi).
The table shows that the highest number that prevails in both
translations is that of literal translation.
Out of the total number(292) of literal collocations in the first
translation 195 belong to adjective + noun; 34 to adverb +
adjective; 23 to noun + noun; whereas in the second translation we
find 177 cases of adjective + noun; 34 to adverb + adjective; 39
to verb + noun; and 29 to noun + noun from the total number of
279.
Literal (Translation 1) Literal (Translation 2)adjective + noun =195/292 adjective + noun= 177/279
adverb + adjective =34/292 adverb + adjective =34/279verb + noun = 40/292 verb + noun = 39/279noun + noun=23/292 noun + noun =29/279
Explicitation (Translation 1) Explicitation (Translation 2)adjective + noun = 62/93 adjective + noun = 16/23adverb + adjective = 15 /93 adverb + adjective = 2/23verb + noun = 8 /93 verb + noun = 3/23noun +noun = 8 /93 noun +noun = 2/23
Equivalence (Translation 1) Equivalence (Translation 2)adjective + noun = 47 /84 adjective + noun = 20/44adverb + adjective = 19/84 adverb + adjective = 10/44verb + noun = 12/84 verb + noun = 7/44noun +noun = 6/84 noun +noun = 7/44
Adaption (Translation 1) Adaption (Translation 2)adjective + noun = 54 /76 adjective + noun = 80/118adverb + adjective = 6/76 adverb + adjective = 12/118
verb + noun = 8/76 verb + noun = 14/118noun +noun = 8/76 noun +noun = 12/118Transposition (Translation 1) Transposition (Translation 2)adjective + noun = 24/35 adjective + noun = 21/26adverb + adjective = 6/35 adverb + adjective = 3/26verb + noun = 4/35 verb + noun = 1/26noun +noun = 1/35 noun +noun = 1/26
Deletion (Translation 1) Deletion (Translation 2)adjective + noun = 7/11 adjective + noun = 33/48adverb + adjective = 1/11 adverb + adjective =4/48verb +noun =1/11 verb + noun =6/48noun + noun = 2/11 noun + noun = 5/48Transliteration (Translation 1) Transliteration(Translation 2)adjective + noun = 3 adjective + noun =6adverb + adjective = 0 adverb + adjective =0verb +noun = 0 verb + noun = 0noun + noun = 0 noun + noun =0
Style
I have chosen cases when both translations convey the same message but uses different diction.Word choice makes the
difference between translated versions and the original and
specifies in this way the author style. Using i çjerrë instead
of i thatë or e vjetëruar instead of e rrjepur is a matter of style
which differentiate the translator and makes his work more
valuable, obvious or understandable for readers.There is an
special attraction in the search for the right word from the
part of the translator.
ST Translation 1 Translation 2 a shrill voice një zëi çjerrë një zë i thatë worn chair karrigee vjetëruar karrige e rrjepur apricot-coloured light drita me ngjyrë kajsie drita e portokalltë fresh school shkollëe sapopërfunduar shkollë e re
An analysis from a paragraph point of view.
Lets see how these collocations appear in a larger paragraph,
how are they translated and to what extend do they affect the
translation.
First excerpt (chapter 1,pg.23)
" The studio was filled with rich odour of roses, and when the light summer
wind stirres amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the
open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink -
flowering thorn". (chapter 1, pg. 23)
First translation: Studioja qe mbushur me aromën e dendur të
trëndafilave dhe kur puhia e lehtë e beharit fryu duke trazuar pemët që
gjëndeshin në mes të kopshtit, përmes derës së hapur u ndie duhma e
rëndë e jargavanëve, tok me aromën e parfumuar të karafilave.
Second translation: Studioja ishte mbushur me aromën e fortë të
trëndafilave dhe kur puhiza e lehtë e erës lodronte mes pemëve të
kopshtit, përmes derës së hapur futej era e fortë e liliakut ose parfumi
delikat i gjëmbaçëve të lulëzuar.
In the first translation the sentences are arranged in a more
eloquent way. The author tries to describe the event and the
characters of the ST in detail. He is desribing the enviroment
outside the studio, filled with lots of different flowers, their
delicate parfume which inspire the painter.We notice the
translation of collocations in both versions. The messagge is the
same but the uses of different words in each translations makes
the diffference.
-The heavy scent of the lilac is translated as duhma e rëndë e jargavanëve(first
translation) and era e fortë e liliakut (second translation).Both
translators are speaking about the same flower but the first has
chosen a more expressive way, saying duhma instead of era or
jargavan instead of lilliakut these are details that differentiate a
translator and makes his translation more evaluated, clearer and
more readable for the target readers.
-The delicate parfume of the pink-flowering thorn. Here the first translator
has achieved a melodious translation, he has omitted the part of
thorn which is given in the second translation and somehow has
achieved a literal translation of this collcoation. But the noun
thorn is not convenient here as the author is speaking about a
wonderful landscape, a delicate and fragile one.
Second excerpt
Chapter 2 uses lexical collocations to describe the character
extraordinary beauty in detail:
"Lord Henry looked at him. "Yes, he was certainly wonderfully handsome,
with his finely curved scarlet lips, his frank blue eyes, his crisp gold hair. There was
something in his face that made one trust him at once. All the candour
of youth was there, as well as youths passionate purity."(p.34)
First translation: Lord Henri sakaq po e vërente atë. "Po, në të
vërtetë ai ishte jashtzakonisht shumë simpatk, buzët i kishte të dredhura dhe të
kuqe flakë, sytë i kishte ngjyrë të bruztë dhe të padjallëzuara, ndërsa flokët kishin ngjyrën
e arit të qartë. Në fytyrën e tij kishte diçka që të nxiste besimin. Tërë
çiltërsia e rinisë gjendej atje e ngërthyer sikurse edhe pastërtia e
përzemërsisë rinore".
Second translation: Lord Henri e vështroi. " Ishte kaq i bukur me
buzët e kuqe të skalitura, me sytë e çiltër blu dhe me kaçurrelat delikatë biondë. Kishte
diçka në fytyrën e tij që të bënte ta besoje menjëherë. Gjithë dlirësia e
rinisë ishte mishëruar në të sikurse edhe pasioni i çiltër".
Reading both translations the first one attracts me more. We
notice how the lexical collocations especially adj + n are brought
in the TT. The first translation has managed to translate all the
possible collocations in detail, remaining faithful to the
original.What differentiate the first translation from the second
one is excatly the style of the translator or word choice which makes
such a great distinction from one translation into another.
The first translation above has tried to translate almost all the
possible collocations of the ST. Certainly wonderfully handsome, two
possible versions translated as jashtëzakonisht shumë simpatik and kaq i
bukur. Again, finely curved scarlet lips as buzët i kishte të dredhura dhe të kuqe
flakë and buzët e kuqe të skalitura.etc.The author does not only describes
events and setting in details but also the characters by
emphasising their physical characteristics and their inner world.
The first book translated represent a language in fact that
is typical for the writer. He uses words of everyday usage-
colloquial language but not only in this kind of translation,
we find words that we do not normally use in everyday
speaking or even writing. Words such as ëndërra kundërshtjellse,
cigarja rëndake or rob koti, çehren e fytyrës verdhacuke, djalkë, ju gjegj ai (p
13),u shtriq ai, etc. In this case he has given the TT equivalents
that are most appropriate and gives that flavour to the text
that seems as if the book is writen in Albanian. Both
translated versions differ in the use of words and this is
what makes the difference or distinction between them. The
first translator has perfectly arranged a good translation.
The words used coincide with that of the ST in the sense that
the book is written long ago (1869).
Conclusions
Translating collocations is not an easy task. Choosing the right
collocation for a translator will make the text sound more
natural, above all they need to understand original language
grammar and syntax, appreciate and understand literary devices
used by original authors and understand the target audience and
its language. As collocations play a vital role in language they
have gained a great importance in language. Translating literary texts usually is a special case since the literary text has special
features that distinguishes it from other kinds of texts. Translators
as well as students must understand the relationship between
words, so which nouns are used with which words, which verbs are
used with which nouns and which adjectives with which nouns.
I have chosen the most spicy examples of both translations to
analyse and how these translations are given in target texts: In
these kind of translation it is clearly noted the distinction
between two translations under the study.In the first book the
translation is detailed and close to original, the translator
tries to introduce everything and is more discreet, while the
second translator achieves the production of an accurate message
from the tanslation point of view. At time the second translation
tries to omit, that’s why the first translation gives a flavor to
the text and makes it more attractive to the readers.
In both books the translations are nearly the same regard to the
message. This mean that the translator has used different diction
to express the same meaning.The first writer (K. Briçi) has
translated nearly all the words with their proper equivalents,
while in the second translation (N. Kalldremxhi) there have been
cases of untraslatability or omissions of the words. Here is seen
a more direct translation of words. The adj + noun collocation are
that kind of collocation that are used more in this literary work
and gives a flavor to the text. They occur in a high frequency
than other collocations and hold a great importance in the work because they describe the characters, the events, the enviroment, setting
in detail. In the first translation of (Klodian Briçi) these lexical
collocations are even more detailed and closer to the original whereas
the second translation of (Nikoleta Kalldremxhi) tries to cut short .
In v + n collocation the translation is nearly the same in both
books with a slight difference in the second translation. Mostly
the translation is reached through a literal method which is
easily recognizable and both translators has maintained the same
structure. The distinction is made between the use of other
collocation especially of adj + n & adv + adj where the demand is
greater from the part of the translator.
A distinction in word choice is noticed in both translations,
meaning that each author has used his /her own style, diction,
sentence structure and this is refleceted in the translation of
lexical collocations which are under the study.We can say that
depending on the category of the collocation they no changes at
all (literal translation, the collocation is translated as it is
in the st). In experience radical changes,(where the collocation
has been translated in a totally different manner) slight
changes(where the translator has not translated the whole
collocation but partialy)or the translation of collocations exist
certain principles and if the translator does not maintain them,
problems and mistakes may occur. In general both translations are
arranged in such a good, understandable, meaningful product.
-Even though we have mentioned that literal translation is not
always suitable, especially for literary work in these cases it
has proved successful. Most of translated collocations for each
category have produced a target text close to original without
distorting nuances of meaning. This lead in a well translation and
comprehensible target text. As it is believed that literal
translation is the basic translation procedure in communicative
and semantic translation, it ranges from one word to one word from
collocation to collocation, clause to clause etc. However above
the word level, literal translation becomes more difficult.
Collocations where words are used in their primary sense are
easily understood and translated and at the same time they serve
as a clue for the translator to guess the meaning of the less
transparent element.
-Explicitation is a method that is most used by the first
translator than the second one. The first translator has tried to
give a broader explanation rather than translating the collocation
as it is in the source text without losing the original meaning.
By explaining he has made clearer the context, adding details that
are not present in the ST. The second translator has used
explicitation but not as much as the first translator, rather he
has tried to translate the collocation more or less as it is in
the source text.
-Adoption is used most by the second translator. At times he has
tried to give a translation that deviate from that of the source
text giving thus a meaningless translation but in general he has
used this procedure to convert ST culture to TT, in a way the text
is rewritten. The first translator has tried to find more cases of
equivalence for the ST collocation making the final production a
challenging one, close to TT readers and to sound more natural.
Cases of equivalence are in considerable number. This strategy has
been used as a means of communicating the meaning of ST
collocation effectively.
Even though the strategy of omission is mostly used by the second
translator, it hasn’t affect the meaning of the TT. There are
cases when the omission is visible and comparing to the first book
makes a distinction.It is not beneficial to use these strategy
just only when it is extremely necessary. Also in both TT we find
examples of partial deletion which tries to give not the whole
collocation but only one part of it.
The cases of transpositions show that they havent influenced on
meaning. Changes in class shift are not great in number but they
demonstrate that the work done by the translators is discreet. In
general all the strategies used in both texts have resulted
affective without having produced odd meanings. They have tried to
translate the collocation in different forms (strategy) as we
mentioned, bringing thus a natural comprehesible text. It is
noticed that even both texts maintain the same strategies their
ranking is different, meaning that in the literal level both
translations are nearly the same, but if the first translation has
ranked explicitation in the second place, the second translation
has ranked adaption, meaning that this strategy is more used in
the first translation and adoption is more used in the second
translation.
The TT translation has implemented more TL collcoations and the
translation results more competent and with a better quality. It
is unique.It is very important to stress that the first translator
ha preserved the same denotative meaning of the SL collocation by
expanding, explaining angd by giving their proper equivalents. As
it seems both translators show abilities in recognizing and
identifying collocationswhich lead them in a meaningful
translation.The fact that the translation has resulted a good one
shows that the translator has had the abilities and good
knowledge to recognise them and to give the proper TT equivalent.
What it is noticed in this work is the number of strategies used
by both translators. The choices made by the first translator
range from literal to explicitation and equivalence, whereas in
the second translation are literal and adaption, this shows that
both translators have produced an effective TT. Translators deal
with collocations in different ways, opting for different
strategies to translate them. This depends on the kind of the
source text collocation and the kind of the target language
collocation at the translator’s disposal but according to Asqlan
(1991, p. 4) the higher the rate of these strategies, the less
effective the translation is, consequently the less natural the
intended communication will be, he states that one of the big
mistakes translators tend to make is adopting several strategies
while translating collocations.Thus we can add that in translating
colocations translators can adopt many strategies such as literal,
equivalence, explicitation, deletion etc. The findings of this
research suggest that literal translation is the most frequent
strategy adopted by both translators. The second top strategies are
explicitation, equivalence and adaption.
The style of the ST work is perfect, whereas regards to the words,
they remain sculpted. The new and talented translator, Klodian
Briçi has made Wilde to speak Albanian language. He has faced a
difficult task, a challenge one which has successfully coped. His
translation is very high-toned, he has remained faithful to the
core of the original recreating it in a wonderful, comprehensible
Albanian vesion with lots of words and phraseology.
As Baker (1992, p. 46) believes, the main challenge the
translator faces while translating collocations, idioms, and fixed
expressions consists of achieving an equivalence above the word
level. In addition, translators should work hard to reduce
translation loss to an acceptable minimum by knowing which feature
in the SL should be valued and which can be ruled out.
Recommendations for further research
Translation requires a special attention on the part of the translator so
as to avoid delivering an awkward collocation and incorrect meaning to
the target audience. It is recommended that the translation of
collocations in literary texts avoid calque translation as much as
possible, it should be used only with marked collocations to reflect the
source text style. and opt for other strategies that help in producing
dynamic equivalence to produce texts with literary style in the TL.
Collocations are a fascinating phenomenon in all genres. Other kinds of
texts such as business, sports reporting, legal language, and science and
technology can be investigated. Hope that collocations will receive
more attention in the future from the part of the translators
since competence of collocations increases and strengthens
translators language in general, they must integrate more suitable
TL collocations into their translations to produce attractive and
expressive writings rather than simple translations that transform
ST words into the TL one.
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