SPECIFIC FEATURES OF TRANSLATION OF REALIA IN RUSSIAN FOLK TALES (BASED ON “MARIA MOREVNA” TRANSLATED INTO ITALIAN BY R. MORONI)

Abstract

The article compares Russian and Italian folk tales. Difficulties associated with the translation of realia are analyzed in detail on the example of the translation of a Russian folk tale “Maria Morevna” into Italian by R. Moroni. The author come to the conclusion that, despite the fact that folklore gives the translator quite ample opportunities to use compensation, his translation is always difficult. The folklore tale reflects the peculiarities of the customs of the peoples and the national character. Therefore, background knowledge and information about the realities of a particular culture are an important component of translation competence. In addition, realities do not have exact matches or equivalents in other languages and cannot be translated on a general basis, requiring a special approach. The quality of translation depends very much on how rich the translator’s stock of thematic and folk-poetic vocabulary of both languages is. The analysis shows that when translating into Italian, a lot of stylistically colored vocabulary is missed. The final translated text is rather dry and restrained and does not properly convey the cultural characteristics of the Russian language.