Rethinking method in idiom translation

This article explores the applicability of Mona Baker’s idiom translation strategies, especially those from her expanded 2018 taxonomy, in Turkish-Arabic literary translation. Through a qualitative analysis of twenty purposively selected culturally and stylistically marked idioms from Araba Sevdası and its Arabic translation Shaghaf al-ʿArabah , the study examines how semantic equivalence, stylistic fidelity, and cultural resonance are preserved. The findings reveal a dominant reliance on paraphrase and omission, with full equivalence achieved in only a few instances. Literal renderings and calques shaped by non-Arabic idiomatic patterns were also observed. In contrast, researcher-suggested alternatives prioritized functional adequacy by using culturally attuned paraphrases and semantically equivalent idioms of different form. The limited convergence between the translator’s choices and the proposed versions highlights a gap between surface-level accuracy and stronger rhetorical effect. The study argues that while Baker’s 1992 strategies remain useful, her expanded 2018 taxonomy has limitations in its applicability to Turkish-Arabic literary translation: borrowing and omission of a play on idiom were not identified in the dataset, while compensation could not be classified with sufficient confidence.