Insights into translation of Russian realia

This article aims to give a brief overview of the findings of our research on translation strategies, focusing on the issue of transferring the implications and uses of the so-called realia from a source language into a target one, which, for the sake of brevity, we will call SL (Russian) and TL (Italian) respectively. After introducing the concept of realia and possible strategies to convey their meaning, it will reveal through the analysis of some prototypical examples (i) a number of solutions the translator-lexicographer should consider each time, according to a series of different parameters, (ii) to what extent these choices can vary with respect to different narrative texts or lexicography and (iii) the absence of homogeneity in translation strategies not only in terms of comparing different monolingual or bilingual dictionaries, but also identifying within the same dictionary. Although the issue of realia translation has been a matter of interest and study in narrative, as well as in monolingual lexicography, it still needs more research to test and compare certain approaches proposed in bilingual lexicography.