Collocations

What’s a collocation?
A collocation is a pair or group of words that are often used together. Such combinations sound natural to native speakers. If English is your L2. Then you’ll need to blahblah……. (No alcance a escribir aquí)

Collocation in pedagogy & Translation
Learning collocations is an important part of learning the vocabulary of a language.

Some collocations are fixed or verystrong, for example take a photo. In this case no other words apart from take collocate with photo to give the same or similar meaning.

Other collocations are more open, where several words couldbe used to provide a similar meaning.

Examples of fixed or strong collocation- how would you translate each example?

You must make an effort and study for your exam (not to do an effort*)
Tetoca hacer un esfuerzo de estudiar para tu examen. +-
Es necesario que hagas un esfuerzo y estudio para tu examen .ok.
Did you watch TV last night (not look at TV).
¿Viste televisión anoche?
Thiscar has a powerful engine (not strong engine*)
Este vehículo posee un motor potente/potente motor.
There are some ancient monuments (not antique monuments*)
(Hay algunos monumentos antiguos/ exigenciertos monumentos antiguos)

Sometimes a pair of words may not be absolutely wrong, therefore people will understand what non-native speaker say. That, however; may not be the natural, normalcollocation.

If you say: I did a few mistakes you will be understood, yet a fluent English speaker would probably say: I made a few mistakes.

Collocations are often idiomatic. Some collocations mayappear superficially*logical* (open the windows, play tennis, break your leg, etc.) Notice one example with the verb open taken from COBUILD.
=the action is an open violation of the Vienna Convection=Is the verb OPEN here about physically opening something?
No, it isn´t.
La acción es una clara violación de la convensión de Viena.

While idioms focus mainly on the meaning of the whole;...