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LEXICAL COLLOCATION ERRORS IN LITERARY TRANSLATION

Year 2019, Volume: 170 Issue: 1, 71 - 86, 28.02.2019

Abstract

This study aims to explore lexical collocation errors in Turkish-English translations of literary texts. To identify, describe and explain the errors (Ellis, 1985), a written corpus of Turkish literary texts and their English translation texts (ETT) was compiled from students of the Department of English Translation and Interpretation. Benson et al.’s (1997) classifications for lexical collocations have been used in order to analyse lexical collocation errors for this study. Also, the most common lexical collocation errors (verb+noun) were examined in terms of restriction on collocability and the L1 influence.  The amounts of errors per lexical collocation type in the ETT indicate that the most common type is that of verb + noun, followed by adjective + noun. Moreover, in terms of EFL/ESL learners and translator education, this study suggests that more restrictions of collocation cause poorer collocation production, and L1 influence plays an important role in translators’ erroneous collocations. The findings of this study have a number of important implications for future practice of foreign/second language learning and translation education. It’s extremely important for foreign language learners to have English-Turkish and Turkish-English bilingual dictionaries of lexical collocations, as searching for the right collocation they spend a lot of time and energy. Also, authentic materials are essential to introduce collocations.

References

  • Aksan, Y. Aksan, M., Koltuksuz, A., Sezer, T., Mersinli, Ü., Demirhan, U. U., Yılmazer, H., Atasoy, G., Öz, S., Yıldız, Y., ve Kurtoğlu, Ö. (2012). Construction of the Turkish National Corpus (TNC).In Proceedings of the Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2012).İstanbul. Türkiye. Available online at http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2012/papers.html
  • Aksu Kurtoğlu, Ö. (2016). A Theoretical View to Collocations with an Argument of Integrant Approach in Teaching Level, Mersin Üniversitesi Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi, MEUDED, 13 (1), 39-70.
  • Bahns, J., & Eldaw, M. (1999). “Should we teach EFL students collocations? System,21, 101–114.
  • Benson, M. (1997). Collocations and General-purpose Dictionaries, International Journal of Lexicography, 3 (1), 23–34. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/3.1.23
  • Benson, M., Benson, E. & Ilson, R. F. (1997). The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. Rev. ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/z.bbi1(2nd).
  • Benson, M. & Benson, E. (1993). Russian-English Dictionary of Verbal Collocations Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  • Bıldırcın, Y. U. (2014). A corpus-based analysis of the morpho-syntactic errors in the written productions of Turkish learners of English as a foreign language: Mersin University sample, Doctoral Thesis, Mersin Üniversitesi, Turkey.
  • Bonelli, E. T. (2000). Corpus Classroom Currency. DarbaiirDienos, 205-243.
  • CDTT (2011). Collocation Dictionary of Turkey Turkish, National Research Project, Mersin University, Available online at http://turkcederlem.mersin.edu.tr/esdizim/
  • Cowie, A. P. (1978). The place of illustrative material and collocations in the design of a learner’s dictionary. In: Strevens, P. (ed.) Honour of A.S. Hornby, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 127–139.
  • Davies, M. (2008). The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 520 million words, 1990-present. Available online at https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.
  • Denroche, C. (2015). Metonymy and Language: A New Theory of Linguistic Processing, Routledge, New York
  • Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Eren, N. T. (2016). Eşdizimlerin saptanmasına ve betimlenmesine yönelik kuram ve yaklaşımlar”, Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 13 (33), p. 28-47.
  • Erman, B. & Warren, B. (2000). The idiom principle and the open choice principle. Text 20(1), 29–62.
  • Ferris, D. (1999). The case for grammar correction in L2 writing classes: A response to Truscott (1996). Journal of Second Language Writing 8 (1), 1–10.
  • Firth, J. R. (1957). The Techniques of Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • Granger, S. (1998). Prefabricated Patterns in Advanced EFL Writing: Collocations and Formulae. In Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 145-160.
  • Halliday, M. A. K. (1966). Lexis as a linguistic level. In C. E. Bazell, J. C. Caford, M. A. K. Halliday, & R. H. Robinso (Eds.),In memory of J. R. Firth, London: Longman, 148-162.
  • Hausmann, F.J. (1989). Le dictionnaire de collocations. In: Hausmann, F.,Reichmann, O., Wiegand, H., Zgusta, L. (eds.) Worterbucher: in internationals Handbuchzur Lexicographie. Dictionaries, Dictionnaires, deGruyter, Berlin, 1010–1019.
  • Hill, J. (2000) Revising priorities: from grammatical failure to collocational success. In Lewis, M. (ed.) Teaching Collocation: Further Developments in the Lexical Approach. London: Heinle Cengage Learning.
  • Hoey, M. (2005). Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. Routledge.
  • Howart, P. (1998). Phraseology and Second Language Proficiency.Applied Linguistics, 19, 24-44.
  • Huang, L-S.( 2001). Knowledge of English collocations: An analysis of Taiwanese EFL learners. In Texas papers in foreign language education: Selected proceedings from the Texas foreign language education conference 2001, 6(1), 113-129. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. 465 288).
  • Jurko, P. (2010). Slovene-English contrastive phraseology: Lexical collocations. ELOPE, 7 (2), 57-73.DOI 10.4312/elope.7.2.57-73.
  • Kjellmer, G. (1987). Aspects of English collocations. In: Meijs, W. (ed.) Corpus Linguistics and Beyond, Rodopi, Amsterdam,133–140.
  • Kurtul, K. (2012). An inquiry into connectives and their use in written discourse. The Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 8 (1), 110-131.
  • Lewis, M. (2000).Learning in the lexical approach. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach Hove, UK: Language Teaching Publications, 155-185.
  • Liu, C. P. (2000). An Emprical Study of Collocation Teaching. The Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference on English Teaching and Learning in the Republic of China, Taipei: Crane,165-178.
  • Martelli, A. (2007). Lexical Collocations in Learner English: A Corpus-Based Approach. Edizionidell’Orso.
  • Mel’čuk, I. (1998). “Collocations and Lexical Functions” (Ed. A.P. Cowie) Phraseology: Theory, analysis, and applications, Oxford University Press, 23-54.
  • Modarresi, G. (2009). Collocational errors of Iranian EFL learners in written English. TELL, (3) 1,135154. Retrieved September 1, 2017 fromhttp://www.parsgig.com/f/AkUov.
  • Molavi, A., Koosha, M., & Hosseini, H. (2014). A comparative corpus–based analysis of lexical collocations used in EFL textbooks. Latin American Journal of Content and Language Integrated Learning, 7(1), 66-81. doi:10.5294/laclil.2014.7.1.4 eISSN 2322-9721.
  • Nesselhauf, N. (2003). The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some implications for teaching. Applied Linguistics, 24(2), 223-242.
  • Nesselhauf, N. (2005). Collocations in a Learner Corpus. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
  • Nişancı, S. (2014). Factors influencing Turkish EFL learners’ collocation production, Yeditepe University, Unpublished Master of Arts : 31
  • Newmark, P. (1988). A textbook of translation. London: Prentice Hall.
  • Noura, M. (2012). Translation of good in the history of Tom Jones, aFoundling. International Journal of English Linguistics (2) 3 Retrieved September 1, 2017 from: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijel/article/view/17643
  • OCDSE (2003). Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English. Oxford University Press.
  • Özkan, B. (2010). Collocation dictionary of adjectives in Turkish teaching method and practice. E-International Journal of Educational Research 1 (2),51-65. Retrieved October 1, 2017 from:http://dergipark.ulakbim.gov.tr/ijer/article/view/1073000055
  • Pahlavani, S. D., Bateni, B. & Hosseini, H. S. (2014).Translatability and Untranslatability of Collocations in Ernest Hemingway’s Novels, European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (3) 4, 1195-1206. Retrieved August 10, 2017 from: www.european-science.com
  • Richards, J.C., and Schmidt, R. (2002). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. (3rd ed.). United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited.
  • Richards, J. (2015). “Tools Learning Beyond the classroom”, Retrieved September 12, 2017 from: www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2015/10/08/language-learning-beyond-classroom/
  • Seretan, V. (2013). A Multilingual Integrated Framework for Processing Lexical Collocations, A. Przepi´orkowski et al. (Eds.): Computational Linguistics, SCI 458, 87–108, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-34399-5 5 Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
  • Shigeziroo, I.1995). The Kenkyusha Dictionary of English Collocations. Tokyo: Kenkyusha.
  • Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Schmitt, N. (2010). Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual. Palgrave Press TNC (2017) Turkish National Corpus, www.tnc.org.tr
  • Uçkun, B. & Onat, Z. (2008). Yabancı Dil Kitaplarında Özgün Metin ve Özgün Görev Kullanımının Önemi: Bir Kitap İncelemesi. Gaziantep Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 7(1),149-164.
  • Ümit, A. (2012). Bab-ı Esrar, İstanbul: Everest Yayınları,
  • Vassiljev, L., Skopinskaja, L. & Liiv, S. (2015). The treatment of lexical collocations in EFL course books in the Estonian Secondary School context. Estonian Papers in Applied Linguistics (11), doi:10.5128/ERYa11.18. Retrieved July 1, 2017 from: http://arhiiv.rakenduslingvistika.ee/ajakirjad/index.php/aastaraamat/article/view/337
  • Wang, W. (1988). A Dictionary of English Collocations (English-Chinese), Nanjiang.
  • Wray, A. (1999). Formulaic language in learners and native speakers. Language Teaching, 32 (4), 213-231.
  • Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language in computer-supported communication: Theory Meets reality. Language Awareness 11(2), 114-131.
  • Zughoul, M. & Abdul-Fettah, H. (2001). Collocational Competence of Arabic Speaking Learners of English: A study in Lexical Semantics. Journal of the College of Arts, 1-19.9. Retrieved September 1, 2017 from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED479650.pdf

LEXICAL COLLOCATION ERRORS IN LITERARY TRANSLATION

Year 2019, Volume: 170 Issue: 1, 71 - 86, 28.02.2019

Abstract

This study aims to explore lexical collocation errors in Turkish-English translations of literary texts. To identify, describe and explain the errors (Ellis, 1985), a written corpus of Turkish literary texts and their English translation texts (ETT) was compiled from students of the Department of English Translation and Interpretation. Benson et al.’s (1997) classifications for lexical collocations have been used in order to analyse lexical collocation errors for this study. Also, the most common lexical collocation errors (verb+noun) were examined in terms of restriction on collocability and the L1 influence.  The amounts of errors per lexical collocation type in the ETT indicate that the most common type is that of verb + noun, followed by adjective + noun. Moreover, in terms of EFL/ESL learners and translator education, this study suggests that more restrictions of collocation cause poorer collocation production, and L1 influence plays an important role in translators’ erroneous collocations. The findings of this study have a number of important implications for future practice of foreign/second language learning and translation education. It’s extremely important for foreign language learners to have English-Turkish and Turkish-English bilingual dictionaries of lexical collocations, as searching for the right collocation they spend a lot of time and energy. Also, authentic materials are essential to introduce collocations.

References

  • Aksan, Y. Aksan, M., Koltuksuz, A., Sezer, T., Mersinli, Ü., Demirhan, U. U., Yılmazer, H., Atasoy, G., Öz, S., Yıldız, Y., ve Kurtoğlu, Ö. (2012). Construction of the Turkish National Corpus (TNC).In Proceedings of the Eight International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2012).İstanbul. Türkiye. Available online at http://www.lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2012/papers.html
  • Aksu Kurtoğlu, Ö. (2016). A Theoretical View to Collocations with an Argument of Integrant Approach in Teaching Level, Mersin Üniversitesi Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi, MEUDED, 13 (1), 39-70.
  • Bahns, J., & Eldaw, M. (1999). “Should we teach EFL students collocations? System,21, 101–114.
  • Benson, M. (1997). Collocations and General-purpose Dictionaries, International Journal of Lexicography, 3 (1), 23–34. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijl/3.1.23
  • Benson, M., Benson, E. & Ilson, R. F. (1997). The BBI Dictionary of English Word Combinations. Rev. ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/z.bbi1(2nd).
  • Benson, M. & Benson, E. (1993). Russian-English Dictionary of Verbal Collocations Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  • Bıldırcın, Y. U. (2014). A corpus-based analysis of the morpho-syntactic errors in the written productions of Turkish learners of English as a foreign language: Mersin University sample, Doctoral Thesis, Mersin Üniversitesi, Turkey.
  • Bonelli, E. T. (2000). Corpus Classroom Currency. DarbaiirDienos, 205-243.
  • CDTT (2011). Collocation Dictionary of Turkey Turkish, National Research Project, Mersin University, Available online at http://turkcederlem.mersin.edu.tr/esdizim/
  • Cowie, A. P. (1978). The place of illustrative material and collocations in the design of a learner’s dictionary. In: Strevens, P. (ed.) Honour of A.S. Hornby, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 127–139.
  • Davies, M. (2008). The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): 520 million words, 1990-present. Available online at https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/.
  • Denroche, C. (2015). Metonymy and Language: A New Theory of Linguistic Processing, Routledge, New York
  • Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Eren, N. T. (2016). Eşdizimlerin saptanmasına ve betimlenmesine yönelik kuram ve yaklaşımlar”, Mustafa Kemal Üniversitesi, Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 13 (33), p. 28-47.
  • Erman, B. & Warren, B. (2000). The idiom principle and the open choice principle. Text 20(1), 29–62.
  • Ferris, D. (1999). The case for grammar correction in L2 writing classes: A response to Truscott (1996). Journal of Second Language Writing 8 (1), 1–10.
  • Firth, J. R. (1957). The Techniques of Semantics. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  • Granger, S. (1998). Prefabricated Patterns in Advanced EFL Writing: Collocations and Formulae. In Phraseology: Theory, Analysis and Applications, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 145-160.
  • Halliday, M. A. K. (1966). Lexis as a linguistic level. In C. E. Bazell, J. C. Caford, M. A. K. Halliday, & R. H. Robinso (Eds.),In memory of J. R. Firth, London: Longman, 148-162.
  • Hausmann, F.J. (1989). Le dictionnaire de collocations. In: Hausmann, F.,Reichmann, O., Wiegand, H., Zgusta, L. (eds.) Worterbucher: in internationals Handbuchzur Lexicographie. Dictionaries, Dictionnaires, deGruyter, Berlin, 1010–1019.
  • Hill, J. (2000) Revising priorities: from grammatical failure to collocational success. In Lewis, M. (ed.) Teaching Collocation: Further Developments in the Lexical Approach. London: Heinle Cengage Learning.
  • Hoey, M. (2005). Lexical Priming: A New Theory of Words and Language. Routledge.
  • Howart, P. (1998). Phraseology and Second Language Proficiency.Applied Linguistics, 19, 24-44.
  • Huang, L-S.( 2001). Knowledge of English collocations: An analysis of Taiwanese EFL learners. In Texas papers in foreign language education: Selected proceedings from the Texas foreign language education conference 2001, 6(1), 113-129. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. 465 288).
  • Jurko, P. (2010). Slovene-English contrastive phraseology: Lexical collocations. ELOPE, 7 (2), 57-73.DOI 10.4312/elope.7.2.57-73.
  • Kjellmer, G. (1987). Aspects of English collocations. In: Meijs, W. (ed.) Corpus Linguistics and Beyond, Rodopi, Amsterdam,133–140.
  • Kurtul, K. (2012). An inquiry into connectives and their use in written discourse. The Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 8 (1), 110-131.
  • Lewis, M. (2000).Learning in the lexical approach. In M. Lewis (Ed.), Teaching collocation: Further developments in the lexical approach Hove, UK: Language Teaching Publications, 155-185.
  • Liu, C. P. (2000). An Emprical Study of Collocation Teaching. The Proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference on English Teaching and Learning in the Republic of China, Taipei: Crane,165-178.
  • Martelli, A. (2007). Lexical Collocations in Learner English: A Corpus-Based Approach. Edizionidell’Orso.
  • Mel’čuk, I. (1998). “Collocations and Lexical Functions” (Ed. A.P. Cowie) Phraseology: Theory, analysis, and applications, Oxford University Press, 23-54.
  • Modarresi, G. (2009). Collocational errors of Iranian EFL learners in written English. TELL, (3) 1,135154. Retrieved September 1, 2017 fromhttp://www.parsgig.com/f/AkUov.
  • Molavi, A., Koosha, M., & Hosseini, H. (2014). A comparative corpus–based analysis of lexical collocations used in EFL textbooks. Latin American Journal of Content and Language Integrated Learning, 7(1), 66-81. doi:10.5294/laclil.2014.7.1.4 eISSN 2322-9721.
  • Nesselhauf, N. (2003). The use of collocations by advanced learners of English and some implications for teaching. Applied Linguistics, 24(2), 223-242.
  • Nesselhauf, N. (2005). Collocations in a Learner Corpus. Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
  • Nişancı, S. (2014). Factors influencing Turkish EFL learners’ collocation production, Yeditepe University, Unpublished Master of Arts : 31
  • Newmark, P. (1988). A textbook of translation. London: Prentice Hall.
  • Noura, M. (2012). Translation of good in the history of Tom Jones, aFoundling. International Journal of English Linguistics (2) 3 Retrieved September 1, 2017 from: http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ijel/article/view/17643
  • OCDSE (2003). Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English. Oxford University Press.
  • Özkan, B. (2010). Collocation dictionary of adjectives in Turkish teaching method and practice. E-International Journal of Educational Research 1 (2),51-65. Retrieved October 1, 2017 from:http://dergipark.ulakbim.gov.tr/ijer/article/view/1073000055
  • Pahlavani, S. D., Bateni, B. & Hosseini, H. S. (2014).Translatability and Untranslatability of Collocations in Ernest Hemingway’s Novels, European Online Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (3) 4, 1195-1206. Retrieved August 10, 2017 from: www.european-science.com
  • Richards, J.C., and Schmidt, R. (2002). Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. (3rd ed.). United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited.
  • Richards, J. (2015). “Tools Learning Beyond the classroom”, Retrieved September 12, 2017 from: www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2015/10/08/language-learning-beyond-classroom/
  • Seretan, V. (2013). A Multilingual Integrated Framework for Processing Lexical Collocations, A. Przepi´orkowski et al. (Eds.): Computational Linguistics, SCI 458, 87–108, DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-34399-5 5 Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
  • Shigeziroo, I.1995). The Kenkyusha Dictionary of English Collocations. Tokyo: Kenkyusha.
  • Sinclair, J. (1991). Corpus, Concordance, Collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Schmitt, N. (2010). Researching vocabulary: A vocabulary research manual. Palgrave Press TNC (2017) Turkish National Corpus, www.tnc.org.tr
  • Uçkun, B. & Onat, Z. (2008). Yabancı Dil Kitaplarında Özgün Metin ve Özgün Görev Kullanımının Önemi: Bir Kitap İncelemesi. Gaziantep Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi 7(1),149-164.
  • Ümit, A. (2012). Bab-ı Esrar, İstanbul: Everest Yayınları,
  • Vassiljev, L., Skopinskaja, L. & Liiv, S. (2015). The treatment of lexical collocations in EFL course books in the Estonian Secondary School context. Estonian Papers in Applied Linguistics (11), doi:10.5128/ERYa11.18. Retrieved July 1, 2017 from: http://arhiiv.rakenduslingvistika.ee/ajakirjad/index.php/aastaraamat/article/view/337
  • Wang, W. (1988). A Dictionary of English Collocations (English-Chinese), Nanjiang.
  • Wray, A. (1999). Formulaic language in learners and native speakers. Language Teaching, 32 (4), 213-231.
  • Wray, A. (2002). Formulaic language in computer-supported communication: Theory Meets reality. Language Awareness 11(2), 114-131.
  • Zughoul, M. & Abdul-Fettah, H. (2001). Collocational Competence of Arabic Speaking Learners of English: A study in Lexical Semantics. Journal of the College of Arts, 1-19.9. Retrieved September 1, 2017 from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED479650.pdf
There are 54 citations in total.

Details

Primary Language English
Subjects Linguistics
Journal Section Review Article
Authors

Özgür Şen Bartan

Publication Date February 28, 2019
Submission Date November 15, 2018
Published in Issue Year 2019 Volume: 170 Issue: 1

Cite

APA Bartan, Ö. Ş. (2019). LEXICAL COLLOCATION ERRORS IN LITERARY TRANSLATION. Dil Dergisi, 170(1), 71-86. https://doi.org/10.33690/dilder.528981