Interpreting Political Idioms from English to Arabic: A Relevance-Theoretic Analysis of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Debates

This paper examines how English idiomatic expressions used during the 2024 U.S. presidential debates were interpreted into Arabic. It focuses on idioms used by Trump, Biden, Harris, and the moderators, and applies Relevance Theory to study how Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya interpreters rendered them. The idioms were selected based on their frequency, centrality, and anticipated impact on the source audience. The Arabic interpreting strategies were categorized into literal interpretation, explicitation, adaptation, omission, and misinterpretation. The analysis reveals a constant tension between linguistic efficiency and pragmatic fidelity. Omission emerged as the most common strategy (35.6%), particularly when interpreters faced culturally opaque idioms. Literal interpretation (26.7%) and explicitation (22.2%) strategies were used when close Arabic equivalents were available, but often failed to convey the original pragmatic meaning. Adaptation (6.7%) and misinterpretation (8.9%) were the least frequently used. The findings suggest that many current strategies fall short when applied in the fast-paced environment of live political broadcasts. This highlights the need for more focused interpreter training. Future research should include feedback from Arabic-speaking audiences and interviews with interpreters to provide a more complete understanding of how meaning is managed, adjusted, or lost during live interpretation of political debates.