Pakistani Translators’ Strategies for Translating English Idioms in to Urdu Language

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a boom of research in the field of translation studies. The present study aims to analyse the strategies employed by Pakistani translators in the translation of idioms from English language into Urdu language. Data has been collected from two English textbooks written by Pakistani translators.Present study is quantitative in nature. The findings revealed that paraphrase or non-idiomatic translation was the commonly used strategy of translating idioms with a score of 85%. The second commonest strategy was similar in content only with a percentage of 12%. Despite linguistic inadequacies and limited knowledge of social nature of meaning, the strategies used by Pakistani translators were successful in transferring the meanings of idioms of English language. Finally, some recommendations are suggested to handle the translation of idioms more adequately.