Functional equivalence in literary translation revisited: A contrastive analysis of English–Arabic, English–Azerbaijani, and English–Turkish

Functional equivalence remains a central yet methodologically challenging concept in literary translation studies, particularly in multilingual research. While pair-based analyses provide analytical depth, they often lack comparative scope, whereas multilingual studies may sacrifice analytical rigor for breadth. This article addresses this methodological tension by presenting staged contrastive analysis as a structured qualitative framework for investigating functional equivalence across languages. Drawing on selected passages from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the study examines its translations into Arabic, Azerbaijani, and Turkish, focusing on four thematic categories: survival and destiny expressions, character-defining dialogues, authorial neologisms and culture-bound lexical items, and symbolic names and toponyms. The findings show that functional equivalence prioritizes the preservation of communicative intention and narrative function, while its realization varies according to target-language norms and cultural expectations. By separating pair-specific analysis from cross-pair synthesis, the staged approach enables analytical depth while supporting cautious generalization. The article argues that staged contrastive analysis offers a structured qualitative approach to multilingual comparison and contributes to a more precise operationalization of functional equivalence in literary translation research. Beyond the three language pairs examined, the proposed framework may inform further research on multilingual literary translation, subject to testing with larger corpora and additional language combinations.