Analysis of Italian realia in the Russian language

The article isintended to substantiate the term "realia" in the theory of translation and to suggest a mode of thematic classification of Italian realia used in themodern Russian language and included in the Russian encyclopaedic dictionaries. Every people's language abounds in words and phraseologicalunits reflecting the peculiarities of the cultural traditions. To start studying this lexical stock, it is necessary to understand what the "realia" factuallymeans in the theory of translation. Quite a number of language researchers (Komissarov V.N., Repin B.N., Sinyavsky A.V., etc.) applythe term "realia" to denote not only objects and phenomena of culture, but also their appellations reflected in the lexical units. It is these realiawords that can be hard to translate and, therefore, pose particular translation problems. Barkhudarov L.S. suggests the most concise definition ofrealia: "words defining objects, notions and situations that do not exist in the practical experience of people speaking another language". TomakhinG.D. confirms that the realia are "designations of the material culture-bound objects, history facts, state institutions, national and folkloreheroes, mythological creatures, etc. that are characteristic of certain nations and peoples." In this stock of words he also includes the onomasticlexicon, the titles of literary and art works, appellative vocabulary and proverbial set expressions, which contain national backgroundinformation. Such researchers as Suprun A.E., and Reformatsky A.A. have raised the problem of classification of realia, whereas the thematicclassification suggested by Vinogradov V.S. and Tomakhin G.D. seems the most complete and perfect. The classification of Italian realia thatare included in Russian dictionaries as well as those used in literary works and mass media in the Russian language is the first attempt ever madein the theory of translation. The realia are divided into the following groups: 1) life conditions and activities (бельведер, гондола, лазанья,синьор, etc.); 2) arts sphere (барокко, мандолина, кончертино, канцона, аллегро, бельканто, etc.); 3) State administrative system and sociallife (дуче, скуадра адзурра, сольдо, траттория, берсальер, синдако, биеннале, etc.), 4) ethnic and social communities (карбонарий,мафиози, тифози. etc.), 5) Italian history epochs (Ринашименто, треченто, чинквеченто, etc.), 6) Italian onomastics (Страдивари,Ломбардия, Алиталия, ФИАТ, Уффици, "Травиата", Фиорентина, etc.) and 7) image-bearing expressions (поле чудес, Все дороги ведут вРим, etc.). This classification cannot be considered complete and, therefore, requires further study and perfection. The analysis carried out inthe article makes it possible to estimate the contribution of the Italian culture to the world civilization and to trace the development of the interculturalcontacts between Russia and Italy that is a research object of ethnolinguistics.

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