Idioms Across Cultures: A Corpus-Based Study of Translation Strategies in Amy Tan’s Novels

Abstract

This study examines how English idioms are translated into Arabic in literary contexts, focusing on Amy Tan’s novels The Joy Luck Club and The Hundred Secret Senses. The purpose is to investigate which strategies translators employ when faced with culturally and linguistically distant idiomatic expressions, and to assess how these strategies affect meaning transfer and stylistic impact. A specialised parallel corpus of 150 idioms was compiled, with 75 idioms drawn from each novel. Idioms were identified using Fernando’s definition of idiomaticity and analysed according to Baker’s taxonomy of translation strategies. The analysis combined quantitative counts of strategy use with qualitative readings of context to reveal patterns and explain translation choices. A chi-square test was applied to determine whether distributions differed significantly between the two novels. The results show a clear hierarchy of strategies. Omission was the most frequently applied (46.0%, 69 cases), reflecting the difficulty of finding Arabic counterparts for culturally bound idioms. Idioms of similar meaning but different form accounted for 25.3% (38 cases), demonstrating that translators often preserved figurative meaning while reformulating the expression in culturally accessible terms. Paraphrase was used in 18.0% of cases (27 idioms), while idioms of similar meaning and form were rare, appearing in only 10.7% (16 idioms). Statistical testing confirmed that the distributions across the two novels did not differ significantly. The findings highlight the cultural and linguistic distance between English and Arabic, which constrains direct idiomatic equivalence and pushes translators toward strategies that prioritise readability and functional adequacy. While omission ensures fluency, it reduces figurative richness, and paraphrase simplifies meaning at the expense of stylistic effect. By contrast, reformulation strategies show how translators balance semantic fidelity with cultural intelligibility. Overall, this study contributes empirical evidence about idiom-translation practices in modern literary texts. It underscores the need for culturally informed, meaning-oriented approaches in translator training and offers insights for cross-cultural literary translation.