Insights into Translation of Russian Realia

Abstract

This essay aims to give a brief overview of the findings of my research on translation strategies, especially when it is necessary to transfer meanings and uses of the so-called realia from a source language to a target one, which, for the sake of brevity, we will respectively call SL (Russian) and TL (Italian). After an introduction on the concept of realia and possible strategies to convey their meaning, it will be pointed out, through the analysis of some proto-typical examples, how (i) there exist many solutions the translator-lexicographer should take into account each time, according to a series of different parameters, (ii) to what extent these choices can vary with respect to narrative texts or lexicography and (iii) the absence of homogeneity in translation strategies, not only when comparing different monolingual or bilingual dictionaries, but also within the same dictionary. Although the theory of translation of realia has been a matter of interest and study in narrative, as well as in monolingual lexicography, it still seems little research has been conducted to test or compare approaches in bilingual lexicography.