Idiom! with Guest Columnist, Dotty

Idios, idiosyncratic, idiomatic, idiom... All begin with the Greek root idio, meaning ‘private’ and indicating something like ‘of the self’. It’s perhaps ironic then that common idiom, which begins as language private or internal to a person or group, spreads out and becomes commonplace. It’s also frustrating for translators, because literal translations of idiom rarely work well enough to make them worth the effort.

Today we have a special treat as we’re joined for this, our inaugural look at idioms, by a very good friend of the Article. She’s an experienced translator who found a job juggling English-Polish translations in visual media, and believe me, when she speaks, I listen. I asked her for a quote on the subject and she came back a couple of minutes later with this, so let’s turn it over to her now and see what she has to say. Please give a very warm welcome to Dotty. Take it away Dots!

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One might think that translating idioms is a piece of cake. All you have to do is just find the TL equivalent, right? Well, right and wrong. Obviously, it all depends on the type of translation we’re considering, but in most cases the TL equivalent is the most straightforward and efficient strategy.

But what if we are dealing with an ST that is not an independent piece of written text, but that exists within a more complex picture-text relationship? Take a movie trailer, for example, or a promotional video for a TV programme, which is what I had to deal with quite recently and which turned out to be the most annoying idiom issue I have so far encountered (undoubtedly, another one is just around the corner). The promo was for a British cooking programme that was to be broadcast in Poland. The whole programme was a very competitive cooking contest and the video spot was for the final episode, so it was quite fast-paced and lively, and with the whole thing obviously taking place in a kitchen, the viewer could almost feel the extreme heat of the competition.

This was emphasised by repeated shots of the fires on the stove, and it begged the expression of the contestants getting “out of the frying pan into the fire”, which is exactly what the English producer had used. Now, if you think what the Polish equivalent for this idiom is, you will understand my annoyance back then. How on earth could you relate rain or a gutter to the heat of a fierce cooking competition? Literal translation was not going to work and the discrepancy in the spoken idioms’ imagery did not help.

In these cases, I need to think of a nice way to verbally fill in the idiomatic gap and link the visuals with the text by means of a witty description.

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So, a little inventive wit was the answer to that problem, but since levity isn’t always appropriate, what else can we do? Of course, there are books full of appropriate strategies, but we want to hear from you. What clever – or brutal – solutions have you found to the problem of translating idiom? Email or comment and share your ideas! And don't forget, if there are any strange idioms you'd like to know more about, write and ask!