REALIAS AS THE ORIGINAL’S NATIONAL FEATURES AND THEIR PRAGMATIC ADAPTATION IN TRANSLATION (WITH REFERENCE TO MODERN AMERICAN PROSE)

Abstract

Various means of cultural and pragmatic adaptation of realias in translating contemporary American fiction into Russian are analyzed and comprehensively dealt with. Comparison of excerpts borrowed from three American novels containing realities and other national peculiarities with their parallel versions from the translated texts is based on the similarity of the used unsuccessful adaptation methods resulting in the distortion of both the realias concerned and the original as a whole. The methodology of the performed research is the strictly linguistic examination of the relevant literary meaningful lexical units accompanied by the commonly accepted philological methods of fiction analysis. Paramount heed is paid to the results of the faulty and erroneous pragmatic adaptation as well as to its complete absence in the cases where it would be absolutely required. The analysis of the fairly considerable factual material has made it possible to subdivide the adaptation methods used by the three independent translators into four strictly delimited categories. It has helped unite and systematize the typical adaptation means used in translating fiction as an indivisible classification pattern.