collocation-idiom-and-fixed-expression

name	collocation-idiom-and-fixed-expression
description	Diagnoses collocation, idiom, and fixed-expression non-equivalence and reviews a chosen rendering — typicality, markedness, the two idiom traps, and register-specific collocability — owning multi-word patterning, not the single-word lexical gap that word-level-nonequivalence-and-strategies owns. Use when a caller asks whether an idiom or phrase sounds natural in the target, or how to render a saying or fixed expression.
kind	skill
status	ready
provenance	{"principles":["P013","P014","P040","P042","P043","P044","P058","P061","P063","P083","P107","P108","P109","P110"],"claims":["C00027","C00028","C00071","C00072","C00073","C00074","C00075","C00076","C00077","C00078","C00079","C00080","C00081","C00082","C00083","C00084","C00085","C00086","C00089","C00090","C00091","C00092","C00093","C00094","C00095","C00096","C00097","C00099","C00100","C00101","C00102","C00103","C00104","C00105","C00106","C00107","C00108","C00109","C00110","C00111","C00112","C00113","C00114"],"evidence":[],"source_anchors":[],"authored_from_digest":"3686c59d19b510008950414be0e98ae474207d3fed92fbde2e3a5397350e8cf2"}

Collocation, Idiom, and Fixed Expression

Purpose

This skill reviews the handling of words that travel in company — collocations, idioms, and fixed expressions. It checks that the translator read each word through its collocational pattern rather than in isolation, judged combinations by target-language typicality, and did not assume that an idiom has a ready target equivalent. It advises and critiques the strategy and its trade-offs, not the final wording.

When to use

• A word combination may be untypical or unnatural in the target language.
• A stretch of language may be an idiom or fixed expression rather than literal.
• A source collocation is marked, culture-specific, or register-bound.
• An expression could be read either literally or idiomatically.

Procedure

1. Treat collocation — the regular co-occurrence of words — as largely arbitrary and independent of propositional meaning, and distinguish grammatical rules from exception-admitting lexical patterning (P042, P040).
2. Judge a combination by what is typical in the target language rather than by what is merely admissible, and use the target's own natural phraseology and fixed expressions (P043, P110).
3. At the interpretation stage, read a word through its collocational pattern rather than substituting a dictionary equivalent (P058).
4. Recognise marked collocations — unusual combinations used for effect — and judge whether the markedness should be reproduced or normalised (P061).
5. For specialized or culture-specific material, learn which collocates are compatible in both languages and accept an unavoidable partial increase or loss of association (P107, P108).
6. Balance typicality against accuracy, accepting that some loss, addition, or skewing is unavoidable when no exact target match exists (P063).
7. Do not assume an idiom or fixed expression has a target equivalent — how a language expresses a meaning is unpredictable — and treat idioms as frozen patterns whose meaning cannot be deduced from the words (P044, P013).
8. Watch the two idiom traps: a misleading idiom that also has a plausible literal reading, and a source idiom whose target look-alike means something else (P083).
9. Apply idiom strategies by fit, choosing among them by style, register, and rhetorical effect rather than by whether a similar-meaning target idiom merely exists (P014, P109).

Inputs

• The source combination or expression and the draft rendering.
• Whether it is idiomatic, marked, or register-bound, and its context.
• The register and domain of the target text.

Output

Per finding: say whether the item is a collocation, idiom, or fixed expression; whether the draft rendering is typical and idiomatic in the target; which trap or markedness it hit; and the grounded strategy plus the loss to accept; in compare mode weigh two idiom or collocation strategies — including the loss or shift each accepts — by style, register, and rhetorical effect (P044). Follow the shared advise/review/compare response protocol in ../../references/translation-equivalence-key-concepts.md.

Anti-patterns to flag

• Rendering a word by its dictionary sense against its collocational pattern (P058).
• Accepting a merely admissible combination that no target speaker would produce (P043).
• Assuming an idiom has a target equivalent, or taking a literal reading of a misleading idiom (P044, P083).
• Choosing an idiom strategy on meaning-match alone, ignoring style and register (P109).

Worked example

Source has "strong tea"; a draft into a language whose typical pairing is "heavy/dense tea" keeps "strong," which is merely admissible, not typical. Diagnosis — the combination is judged by admissibility, not target typicality (P042, P043); use the target's own natural phraseology (P110). Separately, a line like "he kicked the bucket" is a misleading idiom with a plausible literal reading (P083): do not take it literally — it is a frozen pattern whose meaning is not deducible from its words (P013, P044). Choose an idiom strategy by style, register, and rhetorical effect, not because a similar-meaning target idiom merely exists (P014, P109). Residual loss — an idiomatic rendering may shift the source's exact imagery or register; name the shift, accept the smaller loss, and hand the wording back.

References

See ../../references/translation-equivalence-principles-index.md for the full principle catalogue grouped by skill, and ../../references/translation-equivalence-key-concepts.md for the equivalence vocabulary this skill uses.

Provenance

Derived from principles P013, P014, P040, P042, P043, P044, P058, P061, P063, P083, P107, P108, P109, P110, grounded in the distillation-only sources (Baker, In Other Words; Nida, dynamic and formal equivalence). The frontmatter provenance block lists the exact principle and claim ids, which resolve into principles/principles.yaml and analysis/claims.jsonl.