TRANSLATING COLLOCATIONS FROM ENGLISH INTO SERBIAN: PEDAGOGICAL ASPECTS

Abstract

This paper reports on an analysis of translations of English collocations into Serbian by the eighth-grade primary school students. The aim of the research is to conduct an error analysis of students’ translations in order to identify the factors that contribute to students making mistakes and to minimize their number. For this purpose, 20 lexemes which collocate with the verbs do, make, have and give were chosen. Considering their structure, they consist of a verb and a noun, and belong to the group of open collocations, which has a very wide range. Translation is used as a way of collecting information and monitoring students’ progress. The collocations were divided into unusual and unacceptable, while all appropriate translations belonged to the group of acceptable collocations. The results of the research show that students make mistakes because they use verbs with their basic meaning and in wrong contexts, as well as because of imprecise translations. The mistakes made because of these reasons comprise the group of unusual collocations, while the invented translations belong to the group of unacceptable translations. However, in future work, new creative activities should be introduced so that all students could take part in translating sentences. A teacher has to encourage learners to write as many collocations as they can in different contexts. Mistakes in the use of collocations should not be corrected immediately. It is enough to notice them and to find examples of other lexemes which represent the part of a given collocation.