RESEARCH ISSUES OF REALIA IN MODERN UKRAINIAN TRANSLATION STUDIES

The article focuses on the study of realia as a translation category and examines the existing ways of its categorization in Ukrainian translation studies. The aim of the research is to standardize the definition and typology of realia. The objective determined the tasks of the research: to analyse different scholar definitions of the term “realia” and formulate standardized definition; to outline relevant for linguistics and translation studies classifications of realia. Our study relies substantially on the application of linguistic descriptive methodology and devices. The work specifies the nature of realia, its place in the system of non-equivalent vocabulary and its role in the reproduction of national and cultural peculiarities of a certain ethnic group. Thus, realia as linguistic units are means of cultural and national identification, which contain information about the unique features of a particular people. The absence of exact equivalents in the target language complicates the process of their translation, which has led to numerous discussions about typology and ways of their rendering into Ukrainian. Therefore, the most common classifications of realia were considered and supplemented with our own developments. The article also highlights the types of realia used to reflect the ethnic identity and cultural peculiarity of the national environment, them being ethnographic (religious, domestic, architectural, labour, ethnic, cultural and those denoting measures and currency), onomastic (toponyms and anthroponyms) and socio-political concepts (elements of the state system; ranks, titles, status; addresses; socio-political, religious movements, phenomena and their actors as well as peculiarities of administrative and territorial distribution). The research also emphasizes the need for further study of realia aimed at developing a unified system of translation techniques for these linguistic units.