Terminological collocations in trainee and professional legal translations

Abstract This paper examines how translation trainees deal with verb-noun terminological collocations when translating a legal text into their L2. The learner data is juxtaposed professional translations of the same and comparable non-translated documents. results indicate that large proportion renditions attested in reference corpora. There also relatively high convergence between learners’ experts’ choices symmetrical variability. Unattested inadequate equivalents demonstrate variability low frequency individual items, which suggests lack systematic patterns mistranslations. inadequacy solutions mainly caused by choice collocate information transfer naturalness errors, former being more idiosyncratic latter recurrent. In conclusion, we argue for viewing L2 collocational competence through lens genre requirements practice rather than dichotomous categories nativelike non-nativelike collocations.