Between Loss and Gain: A Strategic Analysis of English Idiom Translation into Indonesian among Islamic EFL Students

Abstract

Translating idioms is a high-level cognitive task that requires metaphorical competence not only linguistic proficiency. For pre-service English teachers, the ability to negotiate meaning in figurative language is crucial for natural fluency. This study aims to analyse the translation strategies used by EFL students when dealing with English idioms and to evaluate the resulting phenomenon of “loss and gain” in their translation. Using a descriptive qualitative design and content analysis, this study examined 140 translation data points from 20 fourth-semester English Education students. The primary instrument was a researcher-generated narrative text titled “A Tough Day,” containing seven distinct idioms. Data were analysed using Mona Baker’s framework.  The results reveal that translation by paraphrase is the most dominant strategy (81.4%), providing a “gain” in communicative clarity but a “loss” in metaphorical stylistics. While some students achieved maximum gain by using equivalent local idioms (e.g., swallow a bitter pill), 15% of the data showed “total” loss due to literal translation (e.g., in the following weather conditions). This literalism confirms a significant semantic gap between the source and the target languages. While students demonstrate strong semantic mapping abilities, they remain weak in stylistic preservation. These findings suggest that translation pedagogy should place greater emphasis on compensation strategies to enhance the metaphorical competence of future educators.