Realia vs irrealia in non-fiction vs fiction texts: A case study of translation

In response to the ever-growing globalization and intercultural exchange, the cultural aspects of translation are of the utmost importance. This article aims to examine and compare the translation procedures and strategies used to render culture-specific items, particularly realia and irrealia, in non-fiction and fiction texts. Realia, being culture-bound concepts in the real world, and irrealia, denoting similar concepts but in a fictional world, are challenging for translators since they have deep cultural ties. This study involves a translation analysis, comparative analysis, descriptive methods, and frequency calculations. This study employs a dataset of 400 culture-specific vocabulary items from the non-fiction book by L. Johnson What Foreigners Need to Know about America from A to Z and the apocalyptic novel Seveneves by N. Stephenson and their translations into Ukrainian. The analysis reveals that realia and irrealia are translated by employing different procedures, with calque being a popular choice for realia and contextual synonyms for irrealia. Notably, translation through neologisms has been found only in irrealia. Despite the contrast in translation procedures, both realia and irrealia were predominantly translated using a domestication strategy, boosting Ukrainian readers’ cultural comprehension.