Having a knowledge of collocations would seem to be essential to translation - that is what most CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) software attempts to address. The problem is that there are several layers between a teacher teaching collocations, a student receiving such teaching, a student learning such collocations and a student being able to apply such knowledge. I think you need to look at how said teaching of collocations relates to implicit and explicit knowledge and how that relates to the way in which you are testing student translation ability.

Dear Ahmed Mater

Collocation and translation is always relation when it come to language.

Learning of language depend upon both ability and collocation power.

I think these followings link will be helpful:

1. http://translationjournal.net/journal/52collocation.htm

2. Also see the attached file

Happy researching...

collocation is quite necessary.

Dear all thank you very much

What a great paper by Dr. Shamas! thanks for sharing that! Also, Sadeghi's article is really interesting, noting that lexis is not seen as an important element to teach... I remember having to learn REAMS of vocabulary when I was a young language-learner, but certainly no particular element of colocation. More modern language-learning approaches that I encountered later - aural/oral learning, repetition, comprehension and use of naturally spoken language - certainly helped to build in collocational and idiomatic knowledge from the outset. But I only encountered collocation as a translation concept when I started my MA studies. It has been one of the concepts I have found of greatest use in honing and analysing my translations!

If I understand the question well, I think it is about whether teaching collocations is important for developing students' translation skills. My answer is defintely yes; for both translation tasks: comprehension of the source text and re-expressing the meaning into the target language. For the first phase because the company that a word keeps in a context, i.e. its collocates, determines and refines the meaning: "charged with an offence" is differnt than "charged with reforming the educational system". For the second task, i.e. rendering the meaning into the TL, word collocation is extremely important for it gives the target text the aspect of original composition, the feel of naturalness. Using a wrong collocate, e.g. /sawarny khawf ساورني خوف/ in place of the right collocation intabani khawf انتابني خوف/ harms the linguistic credibility of the speaker or writer.

Being aware of the collocations in the source and target languages will surely play an important role in enhancing the quality of translation.