Rendering Realia of Steven King’s Novel "Joyland" in Ukrainian and Russian

Abstract

This article presents a study of the methods of rendering realia from the novel by Steven King “Joyland” in the Ukrainian and Russian translations. Translating realia appears to be one of the main difficulties because these words and word combinations name objects, notions etc. strange for the receiving culture and do not have direct equivalents in the language of translation. Translators, however, have a system of choices as the methods for rendering realia are described in translation studies. The choice of the method deployed characterizes the suggested variant as more or less successful in terms of rendering the content of a realia together with its specific cultural character. The novel “Joyland” by Steven King, – a popular modern literary piece, contains a considerable number of realia, which were subject to analysis in the aspect of translation. – O. Lubenko, the translator into Ukrainian, – is a highly qualitied professional whose performance is usually judged as successful. V. Veber, the translator into Russian, – is rather well-known but is not a professional. The study of the realia content and the variants of their rendering into Ukrainian and Russian gives grounds to argue that both translator’s variants (though often different) are more or less successful, while, on the whole, O. Lubenko’s translation is more successful. The quantative value of the translation methods used by both translators is about the same, transcoding and calqueing being the most productive ones, descriptive translation, hypero-hyponymic substitution – less productive and other methods – the least productive. At the same time, O. Lubenko employed descriptive translation and hypero-hyponymic substitution more often and also used a semantic neologism, while V. Veber chose to use more excessively such methods as calqueing, functional analogue, contextual translation.