Collocation as Source of Translation Unacceptabilty: Indonesian Students’ Experiences

The aims of the present study are to explore wrong English collocations made by some Indonesian English learners and to find out the causes of the wrong collocations. Twenty seven wrong English lexical collocations and nine wrong grammatical collocations collected from the students’ translation and writing assignments have been examined. After comparing the patterns of English collocations and the Indonesian collocations it is found out that the erroneous English collocations are attributed to four causes: (1) learners’ lack of knowledge of collocation, (2) differences of collocations between English and Bahasa Indonesia, (3) learners’ low mastery of vocabulary and (4) strong interferences of the learners’ native language.It is suggested that the students should be informed that collocation, like grammar, is one aspect of not only English but all other languages that should be learnt if they want their English sound natural and mastery of vocabulary can contribute to the constructing of correct collocations.


Introduction
In learning a foreign language a learner is faced with a variety of problems.The problems are concerned with every aspect of the language: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and even pragmatics.If the foreign language being learnt is still related to the learner's native language the learner normally will find many similarities between the forreign language and his/her native language So the problems he/she will face are not so serious but when the two languages are not related like Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of the Republic of Indonesia, a language that belongs to Austronesian family and English, one that belongs to Indoeuropean family, the problems may become more serious and complicated.
The problems of learning a foreign language is not an unusual phenomenon.It is natural since one is faced with a language which is, in almost every aspect, is distinct from his/her own language.Some of the problems of learning the foreign language can be resolved in the course of learning the language.Grammatical differences can be resolved by learning the grammar books which are widely available.Pronunciation difficulties can be overcome by consulting dictionaries which provide "how to pronounce words".Complete dictionaries can be consulted as well when the problems are concerned with meanings.However when the problems are about collocation (which word goes with what) it is not easy to find dictionaries which can show learners appropriate combination of words.Unlike grammatical mistakes which can be easily decided wrong since they violate the rule/grammar of the language such as not attaching the 's' to the end of a verb when the subject is singular or the third person singular and the tense is simple present, collocational errors are hard to identify especially by a non-native speaker because he/she may think that he/she has constructed his/her sentences according to the grammar of the language but to the native speakers his/her grammatically correct sentence sounds odd.For, example, Ali drives his bike to college is grammatically correct (Ali as the subject is singular followed by a verb in present tense with suffix -s and because Ali is male the use of his is correct and since drive is a transitive verb the presence of the bike as the object is obligatory and to college functioning as adverb modifies the verb drive) but sounds foreign to the ears of native speakers of English because is is not normal to combine drive and bike .In other words it is collocationally incorrect.

Collocation
Two or more words may have similar meaning but only a certain word that habitually goes with (collocates with) other word.For example, handsome and beautiful have similar cognitive meaning but only handsome that usually collocates with man.In contrast, only beautiful that usually collocates with woman.Handsome woman and beautiful man sound odd or unnatural to English native speakers Collocation is not an unusual linguistic phenomenon.Like idiom, it does not only exist in English but in every human verbal language.In other words collocation can be found in any language.Collocation is derived from the verb to colocate which means to 'to locate or to put things together' Numerous definitions of collocation can be cited, however since all of the definitions generally express the same basic meaning but use different wording, six definitions are considered sufficient to show the concept of the collocation.English Club 16 Years defines collocation as "... two or more words that often go together.These combination just sound "right" to native English speakers who use them all the time.On the other hand , other combinations may be unnatural and just sound "wrong".Two examples are given, they are the fast train not the quick train or a quick shower not a fast shower.Another definition given by Wikipedia: " ... a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected".And English leap .comdefines collocation as "... a combination of words that are commonly used together; the simplest way of describing collocation is to say that they "just sound" right to native speakers of English".A straightforward definition of collocation is given by Nottinger and DeCorrico (cited in Chia-Lin Kuo, 2009) that is "…high frequency word combination".A definition provided by Oxford Collocation Dictionary for Students of English, 2002:vii cited in Achmad (2010) reads:"collocation is the way words combine in a language to produce natural-sounding speech and writing.And finally Baker (1992, p. 47) defines it as "tendency of certain words to co-occur regularly in a given language".In the six definitions six key phrases are used when collocation is dealt with that is (1) words that often go together, (2) a sequence of words (3) a combination of words, (4) high frequency of word combination,(5) natural sounding and ( 6) tendency of certain words to co-occur.These definitions clearly show that a collocation is" a combination or a sequence of two or more words that often go togther which sounds natural to native speakers of the language".The use of adverbs often, commonly and regularly indicate a habit of the native speakers to combine two or more words together .Since it is a habit, a wrong collocation will sound unnatural.When we compare collocation and grammar we can see a big differernce.Grammar indicates a clear-cut division between what is correct and what is wrong.A sentence like She speak English very good is grammatically wrong and it is therefore rejected but My sister can cook cake is grammatically correct but the combination of cook and cake is unusual for a native speaker of English since cake is made not cooked.
The pattern of collocation may differ from one language to another.In Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian), for example, the word memasak (to cook) may co-occur with kue (cake) and foods like sayur (vegetables), nasi (rice), sop (soup) etc.The word angry in English collocates with with while kind collocates with to, rely with on.In Bahasa Indonesia marah (angry), baik (kind) and bertumpu (rely) all collocate with the same preposition kepada (to) as in marah kepada, baik kepada, bertumpu pada (kepada).
A native speaker is quite aware of the collocation in his/her language (words which may or may not be allowed to go together).When a non-native speaker uses a wrong collocation, say, for example, to follow an exam as it is commonly used by the writer's Indonesian university students, it is understood but sounds odd to native speakers of English.
Mastery of collocation in the foreign language being learnt is obligatory if the learner wants to speak or write as a native-like speaker/writer because knowledge of appropriate collocation is part of the native speakers' competence (Taiwo, 2004).Unfortunately foreign language learners usually pay more attention to grammar and pay less or no attention to collocation.Mastery of collocation is no less important than mastery of grammar.Taiwo (2004) sees that collocational errors are equally significant as grammatical errors and in fact, more disruptive in communication.Again unfortunately, very few studies have been made dealing with collocation (Kuo, 2009).
According to Benson et al. (1986) as cited in Achmad (2010) collocation is commonly distinguished into lexical collocation and grammatical collocation."Lexical collocation consists of nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs.Grammatical collocation consists of dominant word (like a verb, a noun, or an adjective) and a preposition or grammatical structure.Some patterns of English collocation can be seen below together with examples.

Translation
Translation can be defined as the transfer of meaning from one language (technically called source language) to another language (target language).It is the meaning which is transferred not the form of the source text (ST).Since the ideal mission of translation is to make the readers of the translated text understand and accept it as a reading which is both linguistically and culturally natural as his/her own native language, it is the meaning which must be translated.If only the form which is translated (literal translation) not how the meaning is commonly expressed in the target language (TL) an Indonesian sentence like Hujan turun lagi would be translated into Rain comes down again which may be understood by English native speakers but which sounds awkward since it never exists in their linguistic repertoire."I am waiting for your reply" as the result of literal translation of "Saya menunggu jawaban Saudara" is equally understood but that is not how native speakers of English express the message for what they usually write is "I am looking forward to your reply".
Numerous examples of collocational errors like these made by Indonesian learners when writing or speaking English can be cited ranging from simple collocational errors like the examples shown above to serious collocational errors such as Please kill the machine of the mobile (a direct translation of Tolong matikan mesin mobil itu).
Young learners of foreign language tend to translate literally the patterns of their native language to the foreign language.This is quite common.This is not only a case of Indonesian learners but also of other nationalities as stated by Taiwo (2004): "Studies of collocational errors reveal that collocations in the MT (mother tongue) are often translated directly into English".His example of direct translation made by the learners from Yoruba into English is the use of house money instead of rent.
Literal translation however is not always inaccurate for it is one of a number of translation techniques.According to Nababan (1999, p. 31) when the structure of the English sentence is similar to that of Bahasa Indonesia, a literal translation technique can be applied.His example is I will go to New York tomorrow can be translated literally into Saya akan pergi ke New York besok.Similarly according to Larson (1984, p. 10) a literal translation can be done when the SL and the TL are closely related languages, from the same language family.Then Hatim and Munday's (2004, p. 12) statement implies that a literal translation can be done if the ST is so close or similar to the TT.On the other hand a literal translation is not so common when the languages in question are more distant.And finally Moentaha (2006, p. 50) clearly states that translation at word level can be done and can produce an acceptable translation if the structure of the ST is very simple.Thus we can conclude that if every word in the ST contains its literal/primary meaning.A literal translation then can be done as My father likes to drink coffee at my uncle's coffee shop.
but when a certain word contains an extended/non-literal meaning in a sentence, applying a literal translation can be very misleading as when The child nose always runs is translated into Hidung anak itu selalu berlari because the primary meaning of to run in Bahasa Indonesia is berlari.It is quite illogical that human nose is able to run in the sense that the nose can move.In English the primary meaning of to run for human is to move using both feet faster than walking while one of the non-literal meanings of to run is 'nose gets wet''.

Objectives of the Study
The objectives of the present study are (1) to disclose uncommon English collocations made by Indonesian learners when they translated Indonesian phrases and sentences into English, (2) to compare the English wrong collocations with the collocations in Bahasa Indonesia, and (3) to find out the possible causes of the wrong English collocations.

Source of Data
Teaching English to Indonesian university students for more than thirty years is a sufficient time to watch how the students made collocational errors when they were asked to do a task like translating an Indonesian text into English, writing an English essay or when writing their own thesis as the final task.So the data presented here were not collected from a certain source such as a single writing assignment or a translation homework but from the writer's daily records of collocational errors they made while they were attending the writer's English classes.

Data
Twenty seven items of wrong English lexical collocations have been collected and nine items of wrong English grammatical collocations have been collected as well.They are listed in the two columns below where those on the left are Indonesian correct collocations while those on the right are the translation of the Indonesian collocations into English.

Analysis
First, all of the collocations were grouped into two groups that is one group of lexical collocation (Table 1) and one group of grammatical collocation (Table 2).
All correct collocations in Bahasa Indonesia are presented on the left column and the English wrong collocations are presented in the middle column as the result of the translation of the Indonesian collocations made by the students and the common English collocations, the collocations which are acceptable to native speakers of English are presented on the right column.
Then the items that belong to the same category were grouped together such as the items that belong to verb+ noun pattern, adjective + noun pattern, adverb + adjective pattern and so on.Every item of English erroneous collocations was examined and compared with the Indonesian collocation to find out the causes of the students' English collocational errors.

Discussion
The twenty seven of lexical collocations and nine grammatical collocations are the most commonly erroneous collocations in English made by the writer's students when they were attending the writer's English classes.Those errors were not made only while they were doing translation exercises or projects but also when they were doing writing exercises.
By observing all the wrong English collocations made by the students, the wrong English collocations explicitly show that as foreign language learners the students found English collocations as a serious problem.When they translated the collocations in their native language into English, or when they constructed the collocations directly in their writing tasks, the results were very unacceptable.
The discussion below will show how the English words were wrongly combined due to some factors and which resulted in unacceptable collocations.

Lexical Collocation
The examination of each of the erroneous English collocations indicates that the errors are derived from direct/literal translation of the (correct) collocations in Bahasa Indonesia.As we see in number 1 to number 8 of lexical collocation the students did literal translation of those verbs into English.The verb mengambil in (1) is literally equal to take, mencari in (2) and ( 6) is equal to find, mengenderai in (3) is equal to drive/ride, mengikuti in (4) and ( 5) is equal to follow, mengerjakan in (7) as a transitive verb is equal to do not to work, and memerlukan in ( 8) is equal to need.The students did not know that in English the verb take does not collocate with decision but with make, living/money/salary. cannot collocate with find since find is equal to discover.In Bahasa Indonesia the verb mencari means 1.To try to get something, and 2. To make an effort to get money or food.Pencarian as its noun means wealth or possession collected.In English money is not found but made.In Bahasa Indonesia a distinction is not made whether the vehicle driven runs on two wheels like bicycle or motorcycle or on four wheels like car or bus.The verb mengenderai or mengemudi as its synonym can be used for the two types of vehicle.Unlike English where drive collocates with car,bus, truck etc while bicycle or motorcycle is not driven but ridden.The verb mengikuti means to follow as in mengikuti perintah "to follow an instruction" or Anjing itu mengikuti tuannya 'The dog is following its master'.It can be also used to show attendance at a ceremony or meeting as in Mengikuti upacara nasional 'To attend a national ceremony' or mengikuti kuliah 'to attend a lecture'.So, since the use of mengikuti is wide enough, the students collocated follow with lecture which is certainly unusual.In English one is to sit for or take an examination but in Bahasa Indonesia again the verb mengikuti can go with ujian 'exam' that is why they made a wrong collocation: follow rexamination.In Bahasa Indonesia bekerja means to work in order to get money or food and mengerjakan means to do a piece of work like homework.In English to work is equal to bekerja as in He works at an office which can be literally translated into Dia di sebuah kantor.But a piece of work is not worked* in English but is done.While in BahasaIndonesia the intransitive verb bekerja can change into transitive by adding an affix (confix me-kan) and mengerjakan can collocate with a piece of work like homework so, that is why they made work homework as the equivalent of mengerjakan pekerjaan rumah.The verb memerlukan is equal to need, thus they can say memerlukan waktu (time)/uang (money)/tenaga (energy) etc.But in English especially for time it is more common to say to take time than to need time as in It will take an hour to repair the watch.
Of the pattern V+Adv from 9 to 13 the errors are concerned with the use of the adverbs.The word baik in 9 can be used both as adjective as in orang baik 'good people' and as an adverb as in berbicara baik 'to speak well' or bertingkah laku baik 'to behave well'.In English it is not common to say to speak good except in an informal speech because good is not an adverb although in other cases we can say both a fast train and the train runs fast.
The same is true for cepat 'fast' in 10 and lancar 'fluent' in 11.Both can be used as adjective as in bus cepat 'fast bus' and as an adverb as in bus datang cepat 'Literally: bus comes fast' which means' the bus came early' Again lancar can be used both as adjective and adverb as in lancar kaji 'fluent reading'(the reading of the Koran) and membaca lancar 'to read fluently' while in English fast is not similar to early.The word fast is concerned with manner of moving while early is concerned with period of time.The adverb lagi in 12 means 'again' and' more' as in datang lagi besok 'come back again tomorrow' and ambil lagi kalau kurang 'take some more if not enough'.In English again is concerned with time or frequency, for example, do it again (do it one more time) whereas more is concerned with 'addition' for example, take some more if you like.In Bahasa Indonesia the adverb sangat 'very' in 13 can collocate with mental verbs like suka 'like', cinta 'love', benci 'hate' but not with material verbs as menulis 'write', berlari 'run' or membaca 'read' so sangat suka, sangat cinta and sangat benci are collocationally correct.It is clear that the wrong collocation very like it resulted from the direct translation of sangat menyukainya without realising that very as the equivalent of sangat cannot modify verbs even mental verbs in English.In BahasaIndonesia the adjective matang of 14 may mean 'ripe', 'cooked'.It can be used together with meat, fruit,rice, water etc, as in daging matang 'cooked meat', mangga matang 'ripe manggo', nasi matang 'cooked rice', air matang 'boiled water'.In English, meat is not ripe but cooked.What is ripe is fruit like apple, manggo etc.Both food and fruit are masak for Indonesians but for English speakers food is cooked while fruit is ripe Speakers of language differ in the way they portray an event or a state as claimed by Baker (1992, p. 49).For example, money or water is viewed as a different thing from, say a book or cat.Money or water for them is a thing which is not normally counted so that they say much money/water.Conversely book or cat is commonly counted.That is why they say many books/cats.For Indonesian speakers, on the contrary, the difference is not significant.They view money and book as two similar things and that is why they say banyak uang and banyak buku.An example cited from Malaysian Malay might be a good one to show how they view a Dutch wife differently from Indonesians do.For Malaysian Malay speakers a Dutch wife is bantal peluk.They view it as a kind of pillow to be embraced (according to its function) while for Indonesian speakers it is bantal guling (according to its nature as a pillow which can roll over).So the way how speakers look at a similar thing may cause different collocation in two languages.Similarly buruk 'bad' in 15 can collocate with many nouns such as concrete nouns like muka 'face', rumah 'house', jalan 'road' as well as abstract nouns like kelakuan 'behaviour', mimpi 'dream', nasib 'fate' etc.So for Indonesians, nilai 'exam grade' is also buruk whereas in English it is not customary to say bad grade but poor grade.For beginners the word poor means 'having little money or wealth'as its primary meaning.The adjective lebat 'dense and thick' of number 16 can attract a number of collocates in BahasaIndonesia such as rambut 'hair', hutan 'forest', hujan 'rain', daun 'leaf'.So rambut and hutan can go together with lebat.A distinction is not made between them.In contrast, although the cognitive meaning of dense and thick are similar, but hair is never dense but thick although forest can be both thick and dense.In Bahasa Indonesia when both food and travel/sightseeing are enjoyed, the state is called enak (no17)'enjoyable, delicious', so makanannya enak'the food was delicious' and perjalanannya enak 'the travel was enjoyable'.Both makanan and perjalanan can collocate with enak.In English food is delicious while travel/trip or sightseeing is enjoyable.In Bahasa Indonesia the adjective besar'big,great, huge etc' of number 18 can collocate with many words not only words that refer to physical objects like human, animal, tree, house etc but also with abstract things like wish, hope, success, failure, idea etc. Conversely in English when someone whose body is big in size, the man/woman is big but when a man/woman has good reputation or has done a lot or created something for the benefit of many people, he/she is great not big.
The pattern of dibutuhkan segera of number 20 is verb (passive) + adverb.It is equal to urgently needed of adverb + verb (passive) pattern.In the errorneous collocation (needed fast) the mistake is that the student could not differentiate fast from urgently.In BahasaIndonesia segera which means 'urgently' can be replaced by cepat which means 'fast' without a significant difference of meaning.The diperlukan segera and diperlukan cepat are not quite different.Both may mean 'urgently required' but not 'required fast' for fast is similar to quickly.The translation of ibu itu melahirkan bayi of number 21 into the mother yielded a baby is collocationally wrong.The verb yield cannot collocate with baby but with, for example, fruit.A mother bears a baby or gives birth to a baby when using idiomatic expression.
Low mastery of vocabulary or high familiarity with a certain word makes wrong collocation as in 22 woker's salary, in 23 kindergarten's students, in 24 doctor school, in 25 double language dictionary, in 23 mobile industry, and in 27 general service.In Bahasa Idonesia there are two words which mean 'pay' that is gaji and upah.Gaji is more widely known.Similarly there are two words for people going to educational institutions that is 'student and murid 'pupil'.In Bahasa Indonesia the distinction of status of mahasiswa and murid is clearly known.Mahasiswa are those going to university/college while murid are those going to kindergarten, junior and senior high schools.But in their use of English, the word student is more familiar with them.The word doctor and double are very common words not only for students but the public as well; they have long become Indonesian words through borrowing; while medical and the prefix bi-as used in bilingual are less familiar.They are normally used as technical terms.The word mobil which has been derived by adaptation of spelling from English mobile is very well-known among the speakers of Bahasa Indonesia which means 'car'.It has become an entry in Indonesian dictionary.In Advanced Oxford Learner's Dictionary( 1995) the primary meaning of mobile as an adjective is 'that can move or be moved easily and quickly from place to place', another meaning (informal) is 'having transport especially a car'.So, the adjective has changed to a noun in Bahasa Indonesia as in Saya naik mobil ke kantor 'I drive a car to my office'.In English to say I drive a mobile to my office is unusual.The word industry which is spelled industri in Bahasa Indonesia is a very familiar word to Indonesian speakers and it for a long time has become a lexical item in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (a complete and standard Indonesian dictionary) while the word factory is not found in the dictionary.So it seems that to collocate industry and mobile by the student was caused by familiarity factor.The word general and public are of course synonymous but each cannot collocate freely with any word.Due to the student's lack of knowledge of collocation they did not know that general does not commonly collocate with service but it collocates with words such as interest, knowledge, condition etc.

Grammatical Collocation
When we obseve closely the grammatical collocation errors in the nine examples of Table 2 above it can be clearly seen that the influence of the speaker's native lnguage is very dominant.In Bahasa Indonesia the adjectives marah 'angry'.takut 'afraid' and tertarik 'interested' collocate with the same preposition kepada which in English may be equivalent to 'to' but in English angry, afraid and intrested cannot habitually go together with the same preposition.Angry can collocate only with with, afraid with of and intrested with in.To use 'to' as the collocate of the three adjective will result in uncommon collocations.Again in Bahasa Indonesia the adjective sama 'same', sedih 'sorry' and bangga 'proud' collocate with the same preposition dengan 'with' but again in English same collocates with preposition as, sorry 'sad or regretful' collocates with for or about and proud collocates with of.In Bahasa Indonesia the preposition di 'at, on, in ' can collocate with all location names such as depan 'front', belakang 'back', samping 'side' puncak 'top', dasar 'bottom' and dalam 'inside' Possibly it is the practice of using similar preposition with all location names in Bahasa Indonesia which is transferred into English which results in uncommon collocation in English.
After comparing all the correct collocations in Bahasa Indonesia with all the erroneous collocations in English made by the Indonesian students, the wrong collocations can be attributed to several causes: (1) lack of the students' knowledge of collocation.They were not aware or did not know that, like grammar, collocation is one of language phenomena.Wrong collocations can cause unnatural language.The absence of knowledge of collocation caused them to do literal/direct translation which produced wrong collocations, (2) differences of collocation between English and Bahasa Indonesia.Learners are again not aware that collocation, like grammar may differ from one language to another although there are also similarities, (3) low mastery of English vocabulary by the students.The use of doctor instead of medical and the use of double instead of bi-indicate that their mastery of English vocabulary is so poor that caused them to make doctor school and double language dictionarywhich are unusual in English and (4) the strong influence of the learners' native language as seen in the use of the same preposition to to collocate with afraid and angry since in Bahasa Indonesia kepada 'to' can collocate with both takut 'afraid' and marah 'angry' The results of the present study strongly support Taiwo's (2004) statement that collocational errors are equally significant as grammatical errors and, in fact, more disruptive in communication.Therefore learners should be made aware of the importance of collocation in foreign language learning; it is no less important than the other aspects like grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling etc.

Conclusions and Suggestions
Collocation is a linguistic phenomenon that exists in any human verbal language.Patterns of collocation may be different from one language to another however in some respects there are also similarities among languages.Collocational errors are not similar to grammatical errors however collocational errors (although the meanings found in them are still commonly understood) but they make the language sound unnatural Young Indonesian learners of English tend to make wrong collocations in their sentences as the result of:lack of knowledge of collocation and the application of literal/direct translation, the differences of collocation patterns in both the source and the target languages, low mastery of English vocabulary which caused them to be unable to distinguish the stylistic meaning of two synonymous words, and also a strong influence of their native language which caused them to use English as they use their native language.
It is strongly suggrested that the students should know that there are no two languages which are similar in every aspect.Speaking or writing in a foreign language is not similar to speaking and writing in one's native language.
Then in order to minimize the erroneous collocations in English the students should pay much attention to how native speakers of English habituallycombine words in their native language.

Table 1 .
Common erroneous English lexical collocations