Collocational translatability: cognate adjectives in an English-French parallel corpus

Abstract : Starting from the selection of cognate adjectives in English and French in a parallel corpus of translated texts, this paper focuses on the contrastive analysis of the most recurrent adjective + noun collocations in English and their translations into French. The French translations go from the predictable and congruent collocations to the most unpredictable and structurally or lexically incongruent renderings. The results of this corpus-based contrastive study suggest that although collocational translatability is generally possible there is a clear congruence/non-congruence cline which is mainly the product of the extended stylistic use of these combinations that can turn into clichéd collocations in English journalistic discourse.