A bidirectional English-Portuguese Dictionary of Verbal

Collocations
Stella E. O. Tagnin (University of São Paulo, Brazil)

It is by now widely accepted that phraseological units, mainly collocations, are

essential for a person’s fluency (Pawley & Syder, 1983; Lewis, 1993). By
extension, their knowledge is fundamental to translators who should have an
excellent command of the pair of languages they work with. However, there are
hardly any bilingual reference sources where students or translators can search
for unknown collocations in the target language, one exception being Benson &
Benson’s A Russian-English Dictionary of Verbal Collocations (1993). A survey
(Tagnin, 1998) of how nine English verbal collocations and their Portuguese
equivalents have been treated in nine standard dictionaries, both monolingual
English and bilingual English-Portuguese (Sinclair, 1987; Procter, 1995;
Longman, 1995; Vallandro & Vallandro, 1976; Houaiss & Avery, 1964; Houaiss,
1982; Macmillan, 2002; Jelin, 2006) (Oxford, 2002), and in three Brazilian
dictionaries, two bilingual and one monolingual (Houaiss & Avery, 1964; Taylor,
1982; Ferreira, 1975) showed that these collocations have not received
systematic treatment, which makes it very difficult to find the desired
collocation.

Table 1: Verbal collocations looked up in various dictionaries

English verbal collocations Portuguese verbal collocations

make/take a decision tomar uma decisão
meet/satisfy a need satisfazer uma necessidade
make one’s living ganhar a vida
put a curse on sb rogar praga em alg.
dispel/resolve a doubt dirimir uma dúvida
deliver a speech proferir um discurso
take an exam fazer um exame
do battle travar (uma) batalha
wage war travar (uma) guerra

First of all, they may be listed under the verb, which is most often the case, or
under the noun. It might be appropriate to list a verbal collocation under the
verb in a dictionary aimed at the comprehension of language but not in one
aimed at production. Usually a speaker or writer knows the noun, the
referential lexeme, but might not know the verb that goes with it. For that
reason, verbal collocations should come under the noun, as Hausmann (1985)
has already claimed, for the noun is the base in a verbal collocation. Besides,
only very rarely are verbal collocations listed as an entry in their own right.
Mostly, they are either listed as a subentry, or in the definition or still as part of
an example, but sometimes not highlighted in any form.
 This paper will discuss the compilation of a bidirectional English-
Portuguese/Portuguese-English dictionary of verbal collocations, which
encompass the following structures:

V (Det) N – make trouble, make an impression

V + Prep + N – come into force, keep in touch
V + Adj – get rich, go wrong

It will report on the early pre-corpus stages of the project, when examples were
collected from books, magazines and newspapers to the present time when
citations were extracted from corpora, mainly the Contemporary Corpus of
American English (COCA) (Davies, 2016), the Corpus do Português (Davies &
Ferreira, 2016) and the Corpus Brasileiro (Berber Sardinha, 2016). For some
specific collocations the internet was searched. The paper will also discuss
decisions that had to be made, such as (1) ‘is this a collocation?’; (2) ‘is
frequency the only criterion for a combination to be considered a collocation?’;
(3) ‘is this collocation too specialized to be included in a general dictionary?’;
(4) ‘is this a good example, does it make the meaning clear?’; (5) ‘how can we
find a good equivalent’; (6) ‘should cognate verbal collocations be included?’;
(7) ‘how do we account for verbal collocations for which the equivalent is not a
collocation?’
These are some of the answers we came up with:
(1) For a combination to be considered a collocation it must present
some type of lexical restriction: give a book is not a collocation because give in
this sense means to hand something over to someone and it can combine with
any object, such as give a book, give a pencil, give a present, give a dress etc.
However give a paper at a conference has a very specific meaning and is thus
considered a collocation.
(2) Frequency is not always the sole criterion, exclusivity (Brezina,
McEnery, & Wattam, 2015, p. 140) is equally relevant. The Portuguese word for
doubt, ‘dúvida’, collocates with ‘esclarecer’ (clarify) 2730 times in the Corpus do
Português: Web/Dialect but only 321 with its synonym ‘dirimir’. Nevertheless,
DÚVIDA is the most common collocate of DIRIMIR, which qualifies the
combination as a collocation. The same may be said for FURL which, though
not a frequent verb, combines mostly with some type of sail: Scouts untied
lines, furled sails, dropped anchor. I went aloft to furl the mainsail in a
blow.
(3) This can be a tricky question, but we have decided to only include
specialized collocations which are known to the general public or, as the editors
of the Oxford Collocations dictionary for students of English have put it, to the
“educated non-specialist” (Oxford Collocations Dictionary, 2002, p. ix). So, for
instance, score a goal has been included, while jump offside has not. By the
same token, everyday legal collocations such as file/settle/dismiss a lawsuit are
also listed.
(4) We have attempted to use examples that make the meaning clear
because the dictionary does not include definitions. For instance, Tom, you
bring up a point that I brought up a few weeks back does not offer enough
context for the user to infer the meaning of bring up a point , whereas While I
doubt this is true, it does bring up a point I want to discuss does.
(5) Finding a good equivalent can be difficult at times for various
reasons: the collocation in language A is not translated by a similar collocation
in language B. Whereas crash a party is a V + N collocation, its Portuguese
equivalent, ‘entrar de penetra numa festa’ is not actually a collocation as we
have defined it. Some collocations are translated by a single verb, like go sour
whose equivalent is simply ‘azedar’. More often than not nouns are quite
different across languages: make arrangements becomes ‘tomar providências’
in Portuguese. In such cases one has to rely on one’s own knowledge of both
languages or resort to searches in monolingual or even bilingual parallel
corpora (Tagnin, 2007).
(6) We have opted to include cognate verbal collocations because they
may differ in their inclusion or not of a determiner, for instance. Make a
difference requires some kind of determiner, while in the Portuguese
translation, ‘fazer (uma) diferença’, the determiner is not compulsory.
(7) Because this is a bidirectional dictionary, the verbal collocation will
only be listed in the source language, that is, if it is a verbal collocation in
English but not in Portuguese, there will be an entry for it in the English-
Portuguese direction, but not in the reverse direction. For example, go sour will
have an entry in the English-Portuguese direction with its equivalent ‘azedar’,
but ‘azedar’ will not be an entry in the other direction as it is not a verbal
collocation.
Here are two sample entries, one in each direction. Please note that the
example for the equivalent in the target language is not a translation of the
example in the source language; it is always an authentic rendition in its own
right.

English-Portuguese

advance [progress]
 advance, make an
Residents have reported seeing Mr. Taylor’s forces, which had made a
swift advance into the city centre on Wednesday, now withdraw from the area.
... and that in the essential things she had made no advance. British
Lung Foundation research is making dramatic advances...
 progresso, fazer
... A China fez progressos significativos quanto a direitos humanos ...
 avanços, fazer
O jogador, além de marcar, também deverá fazer avanços periódicos
pela ponta-direita. Precisamos fazer avanços significativos no sentido de
torná-los mais fáceis de usar.

 advances, make ~ to
I’d be glad if you’d stop making advances to my daughter. Her
husband heard about the advances Simon had made to his wife.
 cantada, passar uma
 As mulheres ... em geral acabam percebendo que não precisam de
homens nem para lhes passar uma cantada.

 advances, rebuff/ reject /resist sb.’s ~

...Jacobs, the slave who lived in the 1830s, described being so desperate
to resist the unwanted sexual advances of her white enslaver, that...
 investidas, barrar/repudiar as; resistir às
Apesar de ter se mantido virgem ... resistindo firmemente às
investidas de vários pretendentes… ... para barrar as investidas de um
concorrente mais ou menos anônimo ...

Portuguese-English

avanço
 avanços, fazer
O jogador, além de marcar, também deverá fazer avanços periódicos
pela ponta-direita. Precisamos fazer avanços significativos no sentido de
torná-los mais fáceis de usar.
 advance, make an
Residents have reported seeing Mr. Taylor’s forces, which had made a
swift advance into the city centre on Wednesday, now withdraw from the area.
... and that in the essential things she had made no advance. British Lung
Foundation research is making dramatic advances...

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