Standardisation in Translated Language: A Study of Collocations in Peninsular and Colombian Spanish Translations of the Picture of Dorian Gray

Abstract

The law of growing standardisation (Toury 1995) appears to be particularly at play in diatopy, and more specifically in the case of transnational languages. Some studies have revealed the tendency to standardise the diatopic varieties of Spanish in translated language (Corpas Pastor 2015a, 2015b, 2017, 2018). However, to our knowledge, no work has studied this tendency in the Spanish translations of a literary work. This paper focuses on verb + noun (object) collocations of Spanish translations of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Two different varieties have been chosen (Peninsular and Colombian Spanish). The techniques used to translate this type of collocations in both Spanish translations will be analysed. Further, the diatopic distribution of these collocations will be studied by means of large corpora. Based on the results, it is argued that the Colombian Spanish translation is actually closer to general or standard Spanish than to the variety of this country.