You native speakers -- ever hear of collocation?

I hate it when the interpreters come up with words I don't know. I mean who's the native speaker around here? Then I began looking at a new book on Boki's desk --the Oxford Collocation dictionary.

I never heard of collocation.

It turns out to be intriguing new angle on this translation business we do every day. It's the way words combine in a language to produce what sounds to the natives like natural-sounding speech or writing.

For example, we say a "strong wind" but "heavy rain." Strong and heavy mean about the same and if a Bosnian said "strong rain" you'd understand him, but you might smile a little. Because it's off. Or, another example: we say, "He made a small fortune with fused glass bowls." You can't really say a "little fortune." Really advanced speakers learn to make the right word combinations.

We do it without a thought and so thinking about it is weird. It's also a good lesson for writers.

Some collocations are weak -- as in "see a film" but some are strong because they are abstract and not really logical. Such as, why do we say, "see reason"? Other strong collocations are "burning ambition" or "blindingly intelligent."

Boki sometimes points out interesting errors in translations --some are grammatical or definitional but others are collocational -- made in Bosnianfrom English. The best illustration of a collocational error is repeated references in translation here to "open issues." That should be "outstanding issues," which is much more easily understood.

Language that is collocationally rich, the Oxford Dictionary says, is more precise. This is because words embrace a range of meanings, so if you have the right word you can give more than just a generality. It's the difference between:

"This is a good book and contains a lot of interesting details," and this: "This is a fascinating book and contains a wealth of historical detail."