Types of realia and their translatological features in the English version of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s novel “The GULAG Archipelago”

This article is devoted to the study of realia – words and phrases that denote objects, phenomena of material culture, national traditions, customs, rituals, historical events, and processes that do not have exact equivalents in other languages. The aim of the research is to identify the translatological features of Russian realia in the English-language version of A. I. Solzhenitsyn’s epic novel “The GULAG Archipelago”. The scientific originality lies in the identification of realia in this work and the determination of their translation-specific characteristics. As a result of the research, ethnographic realia of the life and labor of prisoners, socio-political realia reflecting the reality of the Soviet state system, and onomastic realia were discovered. The linguistic-translation analysis showed that the transmission of realia into English uses methods of transcription, transliteration, calquing, descriptive and contextual translation, and combinations thereof. At the same time, to achieve equivalence in the translation of realia, it is important to consider not only the denotative meaning but also their national-cultural coloring and historical reference.