Idioms don’t travel well

When writing anything for a global audience, it’s best to leave idioms out of it.

Idioms are groups of words whose meaning is usually metaphorical and cannot necessarily be deduced from looking at each component word. Unsurprisingly, this can make them problematic for anyone who may be attempting to translate word by word. What might you make of these turns of phrase?

Spanish: I have an aunt who plays the guitar. (Yo tengo una tía que toca la guitarra.)
French: It’s the end of the beans! (C’est la fin des haricots!)
Arabic: The sky doesn’t throw chicks. (El samaa la tohadef katakeet.)
Spanish: To leave Guatemala and arrive in worse cornstalks. (Salir de Guatemala y meterse en guatepeor.)

[You’ll find the answers at the foot of this blog post.]

Talking nonsense

Not that English idioms are any more sensible. On the face of it, there’s no obvious reason why feline nightwear (‘It’s the cat’s pyjamas’, for our readers who speak English as a second language) should indicate the highest of standards. Nor is it clear why a taut top lip (‘Keep a stiff upper lip’) is a desirable feature in the face of adversity.

Every country has its own idioms, which tend to reflect back on the culture they come from. Spend long enough studying translations and you might be able to hazard a guess at the meaning of other countries’ sayings, and sometimes find the odd crossover.

Spanish: Everyone has their own way to kill fleas. (Cada quien tiene su manera de matar pulgas.)
English: There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
German: From a mosquito make an elephant. (Aus einer Mücke einen Elefanten machen.)
English: Make a mountain out of a molehill.

The question is: do you want or expect your reader to take that time? Can you be sure they won’t dismiss your communication as gibberish rather than work out you don’t want them literally to push an envelope, put a project in their bed or extract something from a horse’s mouth?

Don’t make work for your reader

And much of the time, we don’t even know where our own language’s idioms came from, or why they mean what they do. We use them based on the context we’ve heard them in and out of habit. Little wonder, then, that they so easily trip up international readers.

In the UK, we may talk of ‘taking a rain check’. But how many of us know the expression is borrowed from baseball in the US, where a ‘rain check’ is the receipt from a ticket, which may be reused if rain prevents play?

Let’s get literal

So let’s not beat around the bush. When writing for global audiences, being as literal as possible is the best method by a long chalk. Anything else just won’t cut the mustard.

Answers:
What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?
That’s the last straw!
Money doesn’t grow on trees.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

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Author: Catie Holdridge

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Catie joined Emphasis with an English literature and creative writing degree and a keen interest in what makes language work. Having researched, written, commissioned and edited dozens of articles for the Emphasis blog, she now knows more about the intricacies of effective professional writing than she ever thought possible.

She produced and co-wrote our online training programme, The Complete Business Writer, and these days oversees all the Emphasis marketing efforts. And she keeps office repartee at a suitably literary level.