Idioms are popular expressions that explain something by using examples and figures of speech. I like them because it’s something that Google Translate will never be able to cope with. They still belong exclusively to human communication. But their beauty is also their limit: they are expressions of each culture, sometimes specific to a tiny area or a city only. They are “cultural-bound”, that is why it is so hard to export them to another context, because the translator needs to find other cultural references.

In my experience, one of the most accurate lists of strategies to translate idioms can be found in the book “In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation by Mona Baker. More.

See: Translator Thoughts

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