Realia vs irrealia in non-fiction vs fiction texts: A case study of translation

Authors

  • Karyna Razumna

    Department of Theory and Practice of Translation from English, Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
  • Maryna Movchan

    Department of Theory and Practice of Translation from English, Educational and Scientific Institute of Philology, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59400/fls.v6i1.1946

Abstract

In response to the ever-growing globalization and intercultural exchange, the cultural aspects of translation are of the utmost importance. This article aims to examine and compare the translation procedures and strategies used to render culture-specific items, particularly realia and irrealia, in non-fiction and fiction texts. Realia, being culture-bound concepts in the real world, and irrealia, denoting similar concepts but in a fictional world, are challenging for translators since they have deep cultural ties. This study involves a translation analysis, comparative analysis, descriptive methods, and frequency calculations. This study employs a dataset of 400 culture-specific vocabulary items from the non-fiction book by L. Johnson What Foreigners Need to Know about America from A to Z and the apocalyptic novel Seveneves by N. Stephenson and their translations into Ukrainian. The analysis reveals that realia and irrealia are translated by employing different procedures, with calque being a popular choice for realia and contextual synonyms for irrealia. Notably, translation through neologisms has been found only in irrealia. Despite the contrast in translation procedures, both realia and irrealia were predominantly translated using a domestication strategy, boosting Ukrainian readers' cultural comprehension.

Keywords:

culture-specific vocabulary, realia, irrealia, foreignization, domestication, translation procedures

References

[1] Aixelá J (1996). Culture-specific items in translation. In: Álvarez R, Vidal C (editors). Translation, Power, Subversion. Cleveland/Bristol/Adelaide. Multilingual Matters. pp. 52-78.

[2] Baker M (1992). In Other Words. A Coursebook on Translation. Routledge.

[3] Bassnett S (2012). The Translator as Cross-Cultural Mediator. Oxford University Press.

[4] Bassnett S, Lefevere A (1990). Translation, History and Culture. Printer Publishers.

[5] Bedeker L, Feinauer I (2009). The translator as cultural mediator. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 24: 133-141. doi: 10.2989/16073610609486412

[6] Busch D (2023). The Routledge Handbook of Intercultural Mediation. Routledge.

[7] Johnson L (2012). What foreigners need to know about America from A to Z. In: How to Understand Crazy American Culture, People, Government, Business, Language and More. A to Z Publishing.

[8] Johnson L (2015). What Foreigners Need to Know about America from A to Z. In How to Understand Crazy American Culture, People, Government, Business, Language and More (Ukrainian). Kyiv: Publishing House “Osnovy”.

[9] Klaudia G (2012). Translation Procedures in the Non-literary and Literary Text Compared (based on an analysis of an EU institutional-legal text and novel excerpt “The Shack” by William P. Young). Books on Demand GmbH.

[10] Klaudy K, Heltai P (2020). Re-domestication, repatriation, and additional domestication, in cultural back-translation. Across Language and Cultures 21(1): 43-65. doi: 10.1556/084.2020.00003

[11] Kyiak T, Naumenko A, Ohui O (2008). Translation Studies (German-Ukrainian) (Ukrainian). Publishing House “Kyivskyi Universytet”.

[12] Longman (2023). Longman dictionary of contemporary English. Available online: https://www.ldoceonline.com/ (accessed on 28 November 2023).

[13] Loponen M (2009). Translating irrealia: Creating a semiotic framework for the translation of fictional culture. Chinese Semiotic Studies 2: 165-175. doi: 10.1515/css-2009-0117

[14] Markovina I (2004). Method of establishing lacunae in researching ethno-psycho-linguistic specificity of cultures (Ukrainian). Voprosy psikholingvistiki 2: 58–64.

[15] Martinkovič M (2022). Genre-specific irrealia in translation: Can irrealia help define speculative fiction sub-genres? English Studies at NBU 8(1): 73-92. doi: 10.33919/esnbu.22.1.5

[16] Merriam-Webster (2023). Merriam-webster dictionary. Available online: https://www.merriam-webster.com/ (accessed on 28 November 2023).

[17] Mizin K, Slavova L, Khmara V (2021). The equivalence of terms denoting the emotion concepts of Ger. angst and A.-S. fear: A corpus-based method. Lege artis. Language Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow 6(2): 69-104.

[18] Mizin K, Slavova L, Letiucha L, et al. (2023). Emotion concept disgust and its German counterparts: Equivalence determination based on language corpora data. Forum for Linguistic Studies 5(1): 72–90. doi: 10.18063/ fls.v5i1.1552

[19] Newmark P (1988). A Textbook of Translation. Prentice Hall.

[20] Oxford (2023). Oxford learner’s dictionary. Available online: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ (accessed on 28 November 2023).

[21] Pettini S (2021). The Translation of Realia and Irrealia in Game Localization: Culture-Specificity between Realism and Fictionality, 1st ed. Routledge.

[22] Rudvin M (2021). The cultural turn in community interpreting. A brief analysis of epistemological developments in community interpreting literature in the light of paradigm changes in the humanities. Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series—Themes in Translation Studies 5: 21-41. doi: 10.52034/lanstts.v5i.150

[23] Salmeri C (2014). The translator as an intercultural mediator. Translation and cultural influences. Lebende Sprachen 59(1): 78-86. doi: 10.1515/les-2014-0002

[24] Slavova L, Borysenko N (2021). Culture-specific information encoded in lacunae: The author’s and translators’ strategies of representation. Studies about Languages/Kalbų studijos 38: 17-28. doi: 10.5755/j01.sal.1.38.27396

[25] Stephenson N (2015). Seveneves. William Morrow and Company.

[26] Stephenson N (2018). Seveneves. Navchalna knyha-Bohdan.

[27] SUM (2023). The Ukrainian Language Dictionary (Ukrainian). Available online: http://sum.in.ua/ (accessed on 28 November 2023).

[28] Taibi M (2023). Intercultural mediation in translation and interpreting studies, The Routledge Handbook of Intercultural Mediation. Routledge.

[29] Venuti L (1995). The translator’s invisibility. A history of translation. Routledge.

[30] Vlakhov S, Florin S (1980). Untranslated in Translation (Ukrainian). Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya.

[31] Volovyk A (2021). Culture-specific items from Ukrainian and Russian fairy tales: a daunting challenge for translators. Studies about Languages/Kalbų studijos 39: 19-32. doi: 10.5755/j01.sal.1.39.27577

[32] Vozna M, Slavova L (2022) Rendering Ukrainian historical terminology of the old RUS’ period into English. English Studies at NBU 8(2): 183-202. doi: 10.33919/esnbu.22.2.2

[33] Zhou X, Hua Y (2021). Culture-loaded words and translation equivalence. Theory and Practice in Language Studies 11(2): 210-215. doi: 10.17507/tpls.1102.14

[34] Zorivchak R (1989). Realia and Translation (A Case Study of the English-Language Translations of Ukrainian Prose) (Ukrainian). Vydavnytstvo Lvivskoho Universytetu.

Downloads

Issue

Vol. 6 , Iss. 1 (March 2024)

Article Type

Article

License

Copyright © 2024 Karyna Razumna, Maryna Movchan

Creative Commons License

This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.