Dictionary entries: etw. zusammentragen vs zusammentragen

Question

In dict.cc, etw. zusammentragen is translated as to collect sth, whereas zusammentragen is translated as to collate.

Why isn't the entry given as follows:

etw. zusammentragen = collate sth.

This is just one of the thousands of similar situations. In some cases etw. in front of a verb is indeed inappropriate (e.g. gedeihen = flourish), but in the case of zusammentragen it just seems that compilers of the dictionary have been somewhat sloppy, merely failing to add etw. in front of the verb.

Is it proper that there's no etw. in front of zusammentragen, when it's translated as collate?

Answer 1

zusammentragen has the following meaning:

von verschiedenen Stellen herbeischaffen und zu einem bestimmten Zweck sammeln

(source: Duden.de)

Translated into english:

collecting from different places for a specific purpose.

Collating includes collecting and combining information such as texts or data (regarding to Oxford Dictionaries). Thus the most appropriated translation is, indeed, to collect.

There is no difference in the meaning von zusammentragen with or without the object. Using it without any object (without the etw.) is wrong