Semantic features of English collocations with the verb ''make'' in international criminal documents: Difficulties with, and suggestions for learning and translating

aw enforcement agencies. (United Nations Convention 
against International Organized Crime, by Roger S. Clark, 2003, p.25) 
4.3. Difficulties in translating the idiomatic meaning of collocations with ‘make’ 
Idiomatic collocations with the verb „make‟ are those for which the overall meaning 
cannot be built up from the meanings of the individual elements of the collocation. The 
whole collocation denotes a new meaning. In other words, we cannot deduce the 
meaning of the whole expression from the individual meanings of the verb „make‟ and 
the other components. This means that the primary or original meaning of the verb 
„make‟ is completely changed when combined with other words. Thus, a new word 
phrase is formed with a total different meaning. This is incredibly difficult for 
translators because there will be no existing translation. They will have to determine the 
new meaning based on the relationship of the components or by using a range of the 
best available dictionaries. 
E.g. Make off with (to steal), make after (to pursue), make out, etc. 
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In addition, some collocations may have several idiomatic meanings. This 
means that these meaning are mostly determined by the conventional meaning of the 
accompanying constituents of the sentence and the contextual meaning. This causes 
even more difficulties for translators in that they then have to both find new meanings 
and then choose the most appropriate meaning. 
E.g. (1) The chairman could not make out what he said. (= to understand); (2) 
Elsewhere, a criminal association still is required to have more or less durable 
character, and thereby differs from the sort of ad hoc agreement that suffices to 
make out a conspiracy. (UNs Convention against International Organized Crime, by 
Roger S. Clark, 2003, p.15) (= to plan) 
In addition, during the translation of English collocations using the verb „make‟ 
commonly used in English language international criminal documents into Vietnamese, 
a translator may face other difficulties due to the linguistic features of English 
collocations and the differences between the two languages as well as the two cultures. 
Moreover, a translator is always under pressure to provide timely and precise 
information in the shortest time possible because their task concerns international 
criminal investigations and national security. All these requirements pose huge 
difficulties for a translator during the translation process. 
5. Some stages and techniques learning and translating English collocations with 
„make‟ in English international criminal documents into Vietnamese and vice versa 
The English-Vietnamese translation of these collocations requires translators to use all 
the stages and techniques to convey the meaning of the source language into 
Vietnamese. That includes the use of words which already have an equivalent in 
Vietnamese and creating translations of new words for which no equivalent is currently 
available in Vietnamese. Based on the motivated (non- idiomatic) and non-motivated 
(idiomatic) meaning of collocations, the authors suggest four stages and some 
techniques to efficiently translate English collocations with verb „make‟ which often 
occur in English documents relating to international criminal matters into Vietnamese: 
5.1. Stages 
Stage 1: Identify the type of these collocations 
As laid out in chapter 2, every type of collocation has a different pattern and set of 
possible meanings, so the translator has to determine the collocation type by identifying 
its components. 
E.g. Courts make institutional decisions by defining the character of rights. They can 
create strong rights, moderate rights or no rights at all. The character of the right 
represents a different institutional choice. (Convicting the Innocent in International 
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Criminal Cases: A Comparative Institutional Analysis Approach to the Problem, by 
Song Richardson, 2008, p.71) 
“Make institutional decisions” is a collocation using the pattern “Make + Noun” and 
has two components: the verb „make‟, and the noun „institutional decisions‟. 
Stage 2: Identify syntactically/ semantically meaningful units of the English 
collocations. 
In this stage, the translator will identify the general meanings of the verb „make‟, along 
with the meanings of accompanying components in these collocations such as nouns, 
verbs, objects, or adjectives. 
E.g. With the collocation „make institutional decisions”, we will identify: common 
meanings of the verb „make‟ (to create, to produce, or to cause) and the noun 
“institutional decisions” (institutional choices or judgments that you make after thinking 
and talking about what is the bed thing to do). 
Stage 3: Decide whether the units represent constituents or flexible word pairs. 
During this stage, the translator will choose the most appropriate meanings of the verb 
„make‟ and that of the other constituents. These meanings need to be flexible. 
E.g. With “make institutional decisions”, we will choose the most appropriate 
meanings of verb „make‟ (to cause) and noun “(institutional choices or judgments that 
you make after thinking and talking about what is the best thing to do). 
Stage 4: Find matches in Vietnamese and rank them, assuming that the highest-ranked 
match for English collocations is their translation in Vietnamese. 
In this stage, we will translate meanings of the verb „make‟ and other components 
chosen in stage 3 into Vietnamese by finding their equivalents in Vietnamese. Finally, 
the translator will rank these Vietnamese meanings to determine the highest-ranked 
match for the given English collocation. 
E.g. With “make institutional decisions”, we will find equivalents in Vietnamese of the 
verb „make‟ (đưa ra, tạo ra), and the noun „institutional decisions‟ (những quyết định 
thể chế), and then arrange them as follows “Đưa ra những quyết định thể chế”. 
However, these stages are most suited to „make‟ collocations that are combinations 
of „Make‟ + N/ O + V/ Adj, „Make‟ + Exp + Prep, or prepositional verbs. To efficiently 
translate „make‟ collocations forming phrasal verbs and phrasal-prepositional verbs, 
along with the above- mentioned stages, translators should use good collocation 
dictionaries described earlier because the meanings of these collocations cannot be 
deduced from the individual meanings of their components. 
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5.2. Techniques 
In employing the four above-mentioned translation stages, some techniques need to be 
used to produce natural translations of these „make‟ collocations and meet other 
requirements. 
1. The technique of addition enables translators to add some words which are not 
found in the English language when translating these collocations, so as to make the 
translation increasingly fluent and coherent. 
E.g. “Migrants make an important contribution to the economy of Latin American 
countries”. (TOCTA 2010 of UNODC, p.60): “Dân nhập cư mang lại đóng góp quan 
trọng cho nền kinh tế các nước Mỹ La Tinh.” Obviously to convey the appropriate and 
fluent meaning, “mang lại” was added in the Vietnamese version whereas there is no 
equivalent expression to “mang lại” in the English language. 
2. The exact opposite of the technique of addition, is omission which refers to the 
reduction of pleonastic words that might be unnecessary in conveying the meaning in 
the translation. In other words, translators can make use of omission to leave out 
redundant words that do not really change the meaning of the version. 
E.g. when translating “make decisions” as “quyết định”. “Make” was omitted to make 
the Vietnamese version more concise while retaining the original meaning. 
3. Replacement requires translators of „make‟ collocations to have insights into the most 
common types of linguistic units: parts of speech that have a considerable influence on 
grammatical transformations between English and Vietnamese. 
The replacement of parts of speech is quite common in translation. For instance, verbs 
in English can be replaced by nouns in Vietnamese and vice versa to facilitate the 
accuracy and appropriateness of the English and Vietnamese semantics. 
E.g. “The fluid nature of TOC networks, which includes the use of criminal facilitators, 
makes targeting TOC increasingly difficult.”(Strategy to Combat International 
Organized Crime of U.S., 2011, p.17): “Việc tiếp cận TOC ngày càng khó khăn hơn 
chính là do bản chất dễ thay đổi của những mạng lưới này” Obviously, the „make‟ 
collocation “makes targeting TOC increasingly difficult” was replaced with the noun 
“việc tiếp cận ngày càng khó khăn” to provide the equivalent meaning in the target-
language‟s style. 
4. Expression 
These collocations have various forms, with some having idiomatic meanings, by virtue 
of their being short well-known statements or wise sayings that offer people practical 
advice about life. It should be borne in mind that translators, when translating 
collocations, ought to find in the Vietnamese language utterances or word combinations 
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which have an equivalent meaning to those in the English language. Especially since the 
meaning of a fixed combination is not equal to the sum of the meaning of separate words. 
E.g. “Money makes many things”: Có tiền mua tiên cũng được.” It should not be 
translated word by word in this case (e.g. Money makes many things: Tiền tạo ra nhiều 
thứ.”) “Instead, to be easily understandable, the translators turned to the saying with the 
equivalent-meaning “Có tiền mua tiên cũng được” in the Vietnamese language to 
transmit a clearer message to Vietnamese speakers. 
“Practice makes perfect”: Có công mài sắt có ngày nên kim.” Like the example above, 
this too is a situation requiring the expression technique. This makes the inherent 
meaning clear and coherent. How can the translator convey the full message if they 
stick to a word- for-word translation (e.g. “Practice makes perfect: Thực hành tạo nên 
sự hoàn hảo)? This would hardly convey any real meaning to a Vietnamese speaker due 
to the lack of familiarity with the custom. 
In English language documents and newspapers related to international criminal 
matters, this technique is rarely used, because the „make‟ collocations found in these 
documents have few idiomatic meanings. 
6. Conclusion 
English collocations in common and English collocations with „make‟ in international 
criminal documents in particular can be divided into grammatical and lexical collocations. 
Each type of collocation may cause difficulty or confusion in learners and translators of 
English. This is due to the fact that there are no comprehensive clear-cut guidelines for 
non-native learners to decide which exact combinations are acceptable and whose co-
occurrence are predictable; whose are possibly acceptable for creative purposes only, or 
which ones are completely unacceptable. The only way to get better grasp of these 
collocations is by building up an awareness of them and encountering them both 
receptively and productively. Based on the research results, it is hoped that would help 
learners and translators deeply understand semantic features of the English collocations 
with „make‟ in the international criminal documents in their process of language 
acquisition. 
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Appendix 
Hereafter are the collocations with the verb „make‟ extracted from international criminal 
documents in English (mainly TOCTA 2010 of UNODC): 
- Make function as 
- Make extradition 
- Make threat to 
- Make available 
- Make ends meet 
- Make progress 
- Make provision for 
- Make difference in 
- Make it + Adj. 
- Make policy 
- Make a decision 
- Make a claim 
- Make a complaint 
- Make a concession 
- Make contact (with) 
- Make demands on 
- Make an effort 
- Make up 
- Make against 
- Make out 
- Make from something 
- Make in something 
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- Make contribution to 
- Make an enquiry 
- Make a break 
- Make arrangements 
- Make an argument for 
- Make an attempt 
- Make the best of 
- Make a bow 
- Make a cancellation 
- Make a charge 
- Make of something 
- Make up for something 
- Make up to somebody 
- Make full of something 
- Make room (place) for somebody 
- Make terms with 
- Make after 
- Make off with 
- Make up for 
- Make out of