Peculiarities of British realia’s translation in “Scandal in Bohemia” by A. C. Doyle into Ukrainian

Abstract

The article deals with the content of such a concept as “realia” from translational standpoint, its origin, features and existing ways of translating such linguistic units into Ukrainian. The authors of the article determine the difficulties that arise during the translation of realia of original artistic works into the language of the reader, emphasizing a significant role of the personality of an interpreter, which to some extent becomes a co-author of the final transformed work, because of necessity to transfer skilfully not only the meaning of words-realia, but also to save the national specificity of the original. It was chosen, as the most thorough classification of realia on a subject matter proposed by S. I. Vlakhov and S. P. Florin: geographical realia, ethnographic realia (everyday life, work, art and culture, ethnic objects, measures and money), social-political realia (administrative-territorial system, authorities and holders of power, socio-political life, military realia); and were distinguished the most appropriate ways to translate realia: 1) transfer “without translation” / transcoding: transcription, transliteration; 2) translation of realia – hyperonymic renaming; loan translation; contextual translation; method of assimilation; descriptive translation; and the authors of the article submit an example of an analysis of translation transformations in the text of the work “Scandal in Bohemia” by A. C. Doyle in the Ukrainian language. The analysis includes a general list of all realia of the story, the distribution of them on a subject matter and by way of translation, with the separation of their percentage ratio, as well as the study of the professional work of M. A. Dmytrenko, a translator of the story. In future, further work is planned in the field of research on the translation transformations of various writers’ literary works.