English - Vietnamese translation of collocations

54 HNUE JOURNAL OF SCIENCE DOI: 10.18173/2354-1067.2018-0050 Social Sciences, 2018, Volume 63, Issue 7, pp. 54-64 This paper is available online at ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF COLLOCATIONS Le Thanh Ha Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education Abstract. This paper is an attempt to raise translators’ awareness about English collocations and their significance in translation. It lends supports from the Lexical Approach initiated by Michael Lewis [9-11] and discusses the significance of lexical collocations in English. The paper then adopts Baker's approach [1] to translation equivalence and equivalence above word level to address the issue of lexical collocations in translation with contrastive view. It presents some difficulties translating English marked collocations, culture-specific and register-specific collocations into Vietnamese and offers their suggested equivalents in Vietnamese as possible solutions to deal with these difficulties. Keywords: Collocation, translation, equivalents, Lexical Approach. 1. Introduction Words rarely occur on their own in both spoken and written form; As Baker (2018) argues, they almost always occur in the company of other words [1]. However, there are always restrictions on the way words go together to convey meaning as Baker (2018) puts it, “words are not strung together at random in any language” [1, p.53]. We conventionally say thick hair or dense forest rather than dense hair or thick forest. Likewise, we would rather say a fast car but quick glance, fast food but quick meal, not the other way round. In Vietnamese, it is perfectly normal to say mẹ kế or bố dượng, but mẹ dượng or bố kế would sound abnormal; cổ cao and chân dài sound perfectly acceptable but not cổ dài or chân cao. Collocation is commonly used to refer to the restriction on how words can be used together [2]. Collocation is a factor that makes a particular word combination sound 'right' or 'wrong' in a given context [3]. Collocation, as a matter of fact, is conventional and part of the native speaker’s knowledge of their mother tongue although they may not be readily recalled all at one time [3]. However, “the way words combine to produce natural-sounding speech and writing” [4, p.vii] differs from language to language. Đi in Vietnamese can naturally co-occur with xe máy, ôtô, máy bay but in English we would say ride a bicyle, drive a car and fly a plane. Likewise, large forehead, warm clothes, dead branch and heavily involved are widely accepted to the native ear of English while in Vietnamese the respective equivalents are trán cao, quần áo rét, cành khô, liên quan mật thiết. We can see an immediate link between the fact that collocation is language-specific and its implications for the translation of collocations from one language to another in general and from English to Vietnamese in particular. Collocations, in actual fact, can be a potential source of translators’ mother tongue interference. As Baker maintains, equivalence can appear at word level Received January 17, 2018. Accepted July 29, 2018. Contact Le Thanh Ha, e-mail address: halt@hnue.edu.vn English-Vietnamese Translation of Collocations 55 and above word level, when translating from one language into another [2]. In a bottom-up approach to translation, as Baker suggests, equivalence at word level is the first element to be taken into consideration by the translator [2]. However, when words start combining with other words to form stretches of language, their meaning is more or less governed by the meaning of other words which tend to occur in its environment, as discussed earlier. A word can gain different collocational meaning in different contexts, for example, heavy in heavy rain and heavy sleeper, hard in hard skin and hard worker, strong in strong cigarettes and strong wind, hot in hot curry and hot water, mild in mild cheese and mild cigarettes. The meaning of these lexical collocations is dependent on the meaning of individual word elements acquired when these words go together. The translator’s primary task is then to recognize the likelihood of certain words occurring with other words, their meaning realized by their association and seek the equivalence of the whole word combinations as single units rather than its individual word elements. As Newmark (1988) claims, translation is sometimes “a continual struggle to find appropriate collocation” [5, p.213]. He believes “if grammar is the bones of a text, collocations are the nerves, more subtle and multiple and specific in denoting meaning, and lexis is the flesh” [5, p.213]. In the same line, Larson (1998) argues that “knowing which words go together and their collocational meaning is an important part of understanding the meaning of a text and translating it well” [6, p.155]. Regarding collocations in Vietnamese, Trinh (2002) states that they do have their own patterning [7]. As he puts it, it is the translator’s job to find “matching collocations” in search for equivalence between the ones in Vietnamese and those in English [7, p.244]. Dai (1978) also recommends that translators should pay due attention to collocations in the translating process as he believes collocations can help improve the cohesion of the translated text [8]. The aims of this paper are to raise translators’ awareness about collocations and their significance in translation, to present some difficulties encountered by translators when finding equivalents of English lexical collocations in Vietnamese and to suggest possible solutions to cope with these difficulties. It addresses the issue of collocations in translation with contrastive view held in light of the Lexical Approach coined by Michael Lewis [9-11]. 2. Content 2.1. Literature review on Lexical Approach and collocations in English and in Vietnamese The lexical approach was first coined by Michael Lewis in 1993. It was an attempt to combine both structure and vocabulary and argue that language consists of “chunks” rather than individual words [9, p.89]. The fundamental principle of the lexical approach is that "language consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar" [9, p.89]. What this means is that lexical phrases offer far more language generative power than grammatical structures. Justification for this theory comes from statistical analysis of language that shows that we do indeed speak in chunks and collocations. According to Lewis [10,11], native speakers carry a pool of hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, of lexical chunks in their heads ready to draw upon in order to produce fluent, accurate and meaningful language. Schmitt (2012) makes a significant theoretical contribution to the Lexical Approach by claiming “the mind stores and processes these lexical chunks as individual wholes” [12, p.101]. As he argues, the mind is able to store large amounts of information in long-term memory but its short-term capacity is much more limited, when producing language in speech for example, so it is much more efficient for the brain to recall a chunk of language as if it were one piece of information [12]. In actual fact, words are rarely used alone. They live with each other and depend upon each Le Thanh Ha 56 other. Word meaning is also governed by the meaning of other words which tend to occur in its environment. For example, dry in dry weather and dry in dry wine, or pass in pass a test/an exam and pass in pass a law/a motion. It is clear that dry and pass in these examples acquire different meanings when combining with different words. We, therefore, should look at the relations between words when describing the meaning of words. It is the way words combine to make up a phrase or a sentence that is vitally important. In his discussion of word combinations, Wilkins [21] states that in every language, there are items which co-occur with high frequency, others which co-occur as the need arises, others whose co-occurrence seem impossible. In line with Wilkins, Larson [6] believes that some words occur together often, other words may occur together occasionally, and some combinations of words are not likely to occur. McCarthy [14] argues that there is a binding force between the words of a language or “a marriage contract” between words [14, p.12]. Some are more firmly married to each other than others or to put it in another way, some word combinations are unmarked or typical, some are marked or unusual but still acceptable but some others are highly marked or unacceptable. Hill and Lewis [3] point out that many different word combinations are possible but some are much more probable than others and some pairs of words occur together so often that when one sees one word, he or she strongly expects that the other word may also be there. In its broadest sense, collocation is the way in which words co-occur in natural texts in statically significant ways. It may sound an innocent definition, as Michael Lewis [11] puts it, but one very important point needs to be stated: collocation is about the way words naturally co-occur. Collocations are not words which we put together in some sense, they co-occur naturally. In other words, although many word combinations are possible, we tend to use common and regular ones to achieve naturalness in speech and writing. Linguists term these regular combinations of words collocation. McCarthy [13] defines collocations as the likelihood of co-occurrence between words. Collocation, in his view, is a “binding force” [14, p.12] between the words of a language. In his opinion, it is very likely that blonde will occur with hair but unlikely that it will occur with wallpaper. According to Nation [15], collocations are words that often occur together and the collocations of a word are the company it keeps. Under Richards and others [16], collocation refers to the restrictions on how words can be used together, for example, which prepositions are used with particular verbs or which verbs and nouns are used together. Besides, Hill and Lewis [3] also come up with the definition of collocations that is special pairs of words which occur together so often that when one sees one word, one strongly expects that the other word may also be there. If we define collocation as the way words regularly occur together, it is obvious to see that this wide definition covers many different kinds of item. Collocations can also be divided into lexical collocations and grammatical collocations. In this much narrower terminology, lexical collocations combine two equal lexical components (open class words), while grammatical collocations combine a lexical word, typically a noun, verb, or adjective, with a grammatical word (one open class word and one closed class word). In other words, lexical collocation can be understood as a pair of lexical content words commonly found together. Grammatical collocation, according to Benson and others [17], is a phrase consisting of a dominant word (noun, adjective, verb) and a preposition or a grammatical structure such as an infinitive or clause. This classification of collocations can serve to develop the discussion in the next chapter. Grammatical collocations such as blockade against, an agreement that, by accident, angry at, necessary to do are more deterministic and more often found in dictionaries. Lexical collocations such as apply a brake, a complete disaster, disaster strikes, a surge of anger, bitterly disappointed, however, are more problematic for non-native speakers and also more difficult to find in dictionaries. No reasonable explanation would be readily available for native speakers using such natural-sounding word combinations as reach an agreement, reject an appeal, deeply absorbed, English-Vietnamese Translation of Collocations 57 affect deeply. There are often no rules about how to put words together in such ways. They can be a potential source of mother tongue interference for non-native speakers of English as the collocational patterning in English is just typical in its nature. Lexical collocations run through the whole of the English language. It is obvious that they better serve to reflect the world’s states of affairs than grammatical collocations based on the fact that lexical collocations are basically made up of open class words which are lexical content words in direct connection with external reality. Given the fact that up to 80% of the words in both spoken and written discourse are chosen according to the lexical co-selection principle rather than to purely syntagmatic and grammatical factors (Sinclair, 2000) [18], the main focus of this study is on the analysis of English lexical collocations in translation. In the following discussion, we will neglect grammatical collocations with their specific problems and use the terms collocations and lexical collocations interchangeably. Collocations in Vietnamese have their own patterning, as Trinh (2002) argues [7]. He divides Vietnamese collocations into two main categories, those following regular patterns and non- regular ones. As for Vietnamese collocations of regular patterns, they can fall into the following different types: noun-adjective (e.g. Ông Xanh), verb-noun (e.g. nhe răng), noun-noun (e.g. m), verb-adjective (e.g. chơi khăm), noun-verb (e.g. râu quặp), adjective-noun (e.g. buồn mồm), verb- verb (e.g. vùng chạy) [7, p.129-134]. Among these regular types, noun-adjective ranks the highest incidences in Vietnamese. As for Vietnamese collocations of non-regular patterns, Trinh [7] includes similes (e.g. khỏe như voi), idioms (e.g. miệng còn hơi sữa), sayings (e.g. không thầy đố mày làm nên), folkverses (e.g. con gà cục tác lá chanh), and catchphrases (e.g. ngậm cười nơi chín suối) [7, p.135-137]. Semantically, collocations in Vietnamese can have two main fields, “people” and “nature”, according to Trinh [7]. “People” field has the following subfields: appearance (e.g. ngực nở, mũi dọc dừa), character (e.g. lương tâm thanh thản, thú đỏ đen), life and death (e.g. đời oanh liệt, sống ẩn dật), feelings and emotions (e.g. chối tai, hoa mắt), bodily functions (e.g. nhai ngấu nghiến, hiểu lơ mơ), law and order (e.g. bài trừ tội ác, bôi nhọ cá nhân) [7, p.138-141]. “Nature” refers to the following subfields: weather (e.g. chiều vàng, mưa bất thần), flora (e.g. thông reo), fauna (e.g. sâu rượu, thịt rừng), objects (e.g. (đũa mun, tuần trăng), events (e.g. bề dày lịch sử, nguồn tin động trời) [7, p.141-143]. Under Trinh (2002), collocations can also be devided into three types, which are non-restricted, semi-restricted and restricted. Non-restricted collocations are those with the headwords such as “nằm”, “sống” which are open to collocating with a wide range of items such as nằm lăn lỏng, nằm vất vưởng, nằm rạp, sống quanh quẩn, sống thui thủi, sống chui lủi [7, p.143]. Semi-restricted collocations are those with the headwords (e.g. “nho” in nho ôn đới, nho nội địa, nho không hạt) which have “more determined” collocating ability [7, p.142]. Restricted collocations are those which can collocate with only a limited number of words (e.g. hổ gầm, thông reo, mũi nở, râu quặp, quên bẵng) [7, p.143-144]. As discussed earlier, collocational patterning in English is just typical in its nature and collocations in Vietnamese have their own patterning. This could be potential sources of problems for Vietnamese learners and translators of English. The central focus of this study is to analyse English lexical collocations in translation into Vietnamese. It presents difficulties seeking Vietnamese equivalents to English lexical collocations and then suggests “matching collocations” [7, p.244] in Vietnamese as solutions to these difficulties. 2.2. The study The investigation of the study into the nature of English lexical collocations in translation is grounded on a number of research methods, namely documentation, analysis, and synthesis. A contrastive view held in light of the Lexical Approach initiated by Michael Lewis [9-11] is hold Le Thanh Ha 58 throughout the study to compare and contrast English collocations and their equivalents in Vietnamese. The study bases itself on the writer’s own knowledge acquired of the subject and with reference to related literature. In choosing collocations for data collection, the author adopted a translator-biased approach. In this approach, she was oriented towards selecting data from a variety of corpora. Most of the English lexical collocations were selected from the point of view of a Vietnamese translator of English. The author took notes of and recorded English collocations from English books, newspapers and news websites. The investigation also covered English collocations taken from broadcasts on BBC radio programmes recorded by the author. Additionally, she referred to The Collins COBUILD English Collocations, a software programme which contains approximately 2.6 million different examples. These examples were extracted from The Bank of English, a 200-million-word corpus from both written and spoken sources. Oxford Collocations Dictionary was another useful source of data. Discussion with educated English native speakers aided the author in the data selection. The following discussion focuses on three types of collocations collected by the author, specifically English marked collocations, culture-specific collocations, register-specific collocations. Difficulties in seeking equivalents to these types of collocations will be presented and suggestions will be offered accordingly to address the issues. 2.2.1. Treatment of marked collocations in English Marked or untypical collocations involve deliberate confusion of collocational ranges to create new images. Marked collocations are often used in fiction, poetry, humour, and advertisements and other sorts of persuasive language because they can create unusual images, produce laughter and catch the reader’s attention. The following example of marked collocation is extracted from John le Carré’s The Russia House [19, p.102]. Some tout at the book fair wanted me to take UK rights in a book on glasnost and the crisis of peace. Essays by past and present hawks, reappraisals of strategy. Could real peace break out after all? Peace break out is a marked collocation which contradicts the reader expectation. Commonly we would expect war breaks out but peace typically prevails. These typical collocations suggest that war is temporary and undesirable situation and that peace is a normal and desirable one. The deliberate mixing of collocational range in the above extract conveys the unexpected image of peace being an abnormal, temporary, and possibly even an undesirable situation. The reader of the source text is alerted to the writer’s wish to communicate an unusual image. A possible suggestion for the translator in this case is a similar marked collocation in Vietnamese, for example hòa bình ‘bùng nổ’ with the inverted commas around bùng nổ in an attempt to create the same unusual image to catch the attention of the target readership. Another example of marked collocations used in literary text is as follows: Again the Admiral wriggled. It was very awkward for the gallant seaman to have a handsome woman opposite to him, bombarding him with questions to none of which he could find an answer. "Couldn't even get the tompions out of his guns," as he explained the matter to the Doctor that evening. (Doyle, 1982) [20, p.24] Both beautiful and handsome can be similar in the meaning ‘pleasi