This article presents the different stages involved in translating clichés in Harlequin romance novels. Various ways of condensing and reducing clichés are characteristic of the stereotypical networks that transport the reader to peaks of rapture culminating in what is a fitting end to a sentimental novel: marriage. The aim of this translating process is to adapt stereotypes to the target culture, using a cognitive mechanism that allows the reader to recognize all the elements of these stereotypes according to patterns linked to his/her collective imagination. The cliché, by blurring the 'reality effect' ('effet de réel'), creates a 'nature effect' ('effet de nature'). It validates the genuineness of a protagonist's feelings, and allows the fictional world to open on to a representation of desire.