Issues in Translation of Linguistic Collocations
Issues in Translation of Linguistic Collocations

Summary/Abstract: Collocation is a term used to describe two-word combinations when there is a limited number of words that may precede or follow another word. There are many discussions about the term itself; therefore, the characteristics and taxonomies of collocations are under debate. One of the accepted linguistic classifications of collocations is based on properties of collocations such as compositionality, modifiability, substitutability, and internal association (Lu & Xu, 2005, p.4). The aim of the paper was to analyse the characteristics of linguistic collocations in English and their possible translation transformations in Lithuanian. The research targets four types of linguistic collocations: strong, loose, fixed and fully fixed. In the analysis, two main types of translation shifts are considered: level shift and category shift, further subdivided into several types. However, the majority of the analysed collocations undergo a category shift in the translation process. The results of the research indicate that the most common type of linguistic collocations in popular science texts is strong collocations. Loose collocations account for one-third of the analysed instances. Fixed collocations account for the third largest group and the least common group is fully fixed collocations.

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