The object of considerations focuses on problems related with the translation of semantic innovations of idioms. The first part of the article introduces the concepts of idioms, idiomatic standards and phraseological innovations. Phraseological connections or idioms are multi-word units that have a relatively stable form and meaning. This meaning is not a combination of the meanings of separate words that form the unit. A norm is accepted by a community and defined as a standard set of rules pertaining to the use and occurrence of idioms. The most common phraseological innovations are demetaphorisation, semantic contamination, desemantisation and idiom accumulation in the text. The effect of innovations is the fusion of the above mentioned factors with a text making it unique and one of its kind. Innovations expand and determine utterances. What is more, they are added value expressed by a pun. Translation of idioms may cause many problems, especially when they appear in the form and meaning different from the standard one. The main strategies in the translation of innovations are literal translation, using a different idiom that reflects the meaning of the original text, paraphrasing or creating new lexical units. Examples of semantic innovations and their translation strategies have been derived from the novel by Gunter Grass and its Polish translation.