The Use of English Collocations in Written Translation – A Case of University English-Majored Students

The current study attempted to investigate English collocations used in written translation among fourth-year English majors at a university. The participants included forty-one fourth-year English-majored students and three translation teachers who are teaching English – Vietnamese translation courses in the university. To gather data, the researchers used two instruments: a test of English collocations including five types of collocations: an adjective going with a noun, a verb going with a noun, a noun going with a verb, a noun going with a noun and a verb going with an adverb. After data analysis, it revealed that just slightly over half of the student participants were able to find the correct collocations in written translation. Furthermore, a noun going with a verb and a noun going with a noun are the two main lexical errors made by most of the students. The interview was also used to seek translation teachers’ perspectives on students’ ability to translate texts in general and strategies of translation in particular. They perceived that most of their students were not aware of collocations in written translation and still had difficulties in both grammatical and lexical collocations. Finally, some recommendations on improving English collocations in written translation were also made based on these findings.