What is realia and its examples?

Answer 1

. Realias are real objects that exist in a given environment. According to the dictionary definitions, realia is a culture-specific word or phrase which is often difficult, if not impossible to translate into target language (Latin realis - actual, true, and material). Such words and set phrases that name these objects are called realias in linguistics and in theory of translation.

As a linguistic phenomenon realia refers to the culture-specific vocabulary. This term was coined by E. M. Vereshchagin and V. G. Kostomarov. The culture specific vocabulary is composed of words expressing notions which are unfamiliar to another culture and language; words referring to the particular cultural elements, which are typical for culture A and absent in culture B, and unrenderable words, which have no equivalents in target languages. They are the part of background knowledge and of great interest for linguistic and cultural interaction studies. The main challenge that a translator faces in the process of referential meanings translation expressed in SL is mismatching of meanings in two languages. In cases when there is no equivalent of lexical unit of one language in the vocabulary of another language, it is referred to as culture-specific vocabulary.

The problem of the ST national and ethnic uniqueness, text coloring related to its national environment, is one of the principal problems of the translation theory, constituting the notion of translatability.

Distinctive feature of realia is nature of its content (connection of the determine object with a certain country, nation, social community) and the link to a certain period of time. On the basis of these features, S. Vlahov and S. Florin proposed detailed classification of cultural realia.

a) geographic realia:

1) physical geography and meteorology (steppe, tornado, tsunami);

2) endemic species (sequia, iguana, cheryomucha).

b) ethnographic realia:

1) everyday life (spaghetti, koumiss, sauna);

2) work (rancho, kolkhoz, consierge);

3) art and culture (kazachok, balalaika, chastushki);

4) ethic objects (Cossack, cockney, yankee);

5) measures and money (arshin, pud, peseta).

c) political and social realia:

1) reginal administrative agencies (county, hutor, aul);

2) offices (duma, forum, khan)

3) social and political life (Bolshevik, samurai, madame);

4) military realia (katyusha, marshal, ataman).