Document Type : Research Article
Authors
Department of English, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran
Abstract
1. Introduction
Collocations are defined as syntagmatic and lexical structures that tend to go together repeatedly (Afshinpoor & Ibn al-Rasul, 2014). In other words, they are a sequence of words whose occurrence together is frequent, and this frequency is to a degree that cannot be considered accidental. Collocations, which play a crucial role in the coherence of various types of texts, are regarded as one of the most important properties of each language (Sharifi & Namvar Fargi, 2012). There are different ways of analyzing translated texts. One way is to examine translations as independent texts with regard to the elements involved in their production. The current study examined a corpus of translated texts, with focus on collocations and their role in the coherence and fluency of translation.
2. Methodology
In this study, the importance of collocations and their role in contributing to the coherence and fluency of the translated texts were investigated. To this end, the book Twenty Stories by Twenty Nobel Prize Winners was purposively selected. This book consists of twenty stories by twenty different authors, translated into Persian by Asadollah Amraie. The sample of study, including word combinations, were collected randomly from all twenty stories. The analysis of the data was carried out in three phases: 1) the quantitative phase, 2) the qualitative phase, and 3) the descriptive phase. In the quantitative phase, the collocations were examined from the viewpoint of the audience. So, a questionnaire was designed and distributed among 150 participants. The participants were asked to evaluate the collocations both from the perspectives of understandability and commonality. In the qualitative phase, an in-depth interview was conducted with five participants who were professional literary books’ readers. In the descriptive phase, the word combinations were analyzed based on the kinds of lexical combinations that appear in collocation dictionaries.
3- Result and Discussion
The results of the quantitative phase indicated that none of the selected collocations were rated as either fully understandable or commonly used. The data from the interview phase indicated that there are ambiguities in some parts of the text. So, the participants considered the translated text as awkward. This tends to indicate inadequate considerations on the part of the the translator in his lexical choices which led to the pitfall of negative transfer of source language structures. This was due to the fact that the words were not collocated commonly, and this challenged the naturalness and fluency of the translation. The readers are forced to read and reread certain segments of the text to make sense of it. It also was revealed that the word combinations are relatively comprehensible but not common and prevalent in Farsi language speech community. It can also be inferred the translator’ choices cannot be attributed to the translator’s creativity in constructing new word combinations, as they are prevalent neither in non-translated texts nor translated texts by professional authors and translators.
The study inferred that the translated text as an independent text should be fluid and comprehensible to the target language readers rather than merely reproduce the linguistic structures of the source text. That is why the use of appropriate collocations in the way native speakers use language is a very important issue in the clarity and fluency of translation. It seems imperative that translators should have sufficient knowledge of the target language.
The findings showed that one of the most important factors for choosing and accepting a translation is the fluency of the text. The translation should be written in a natural language that conforms to the conventions of the target language. Using unfamiliar and unusual structures should be avoided, and the text should be written in a consistent style. The results of the different phases of the study indicated that the translator has used word combinations that have a low frequency in everyday speeches. As the frequency of these collocational structures is low in Farsi, the text does not enjoy coherence. It is worth mentioning that the study of collocations in translation can have a significant role in the production of natural word combinations that can contribute to more acceptable translated texts.
Keywords
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