József Tóth, László V. Szabó (eds): Übersetzung und kulturelles Gedächtnis – Translation and Cultural Memory
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Translation of Realia and Irrealia in Two Pop-Culture-Related Movies • Nóra Estélyi-Tala, Ildikó Hortobágyi
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2. Realia and Irrealia

2. Realia and Irrealia

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Culture-bound notions, as they are a key challenge translators face, have been in the centre of translation theory for a while. They have been referred to with several names and defined differently, and so are its subtypes. According to Klaudy (2007: 231), realia, or “lexis without equivalence” refer to “objects typically characteristic of a particular language community (meals, clothes, dishes, dances, etc.).” They “tie the text to a specific culture, period or location, and present translators with challenges related to the domesticating and foreignizing effects of the translation process” (Loponen 2009: 166). Díaz Cintas & Remael say that “[c]ultural references (CRs) are references to items that are tied up with a community’s culture, history or geography, and they can pose serious translation challenges” (Díaz Cintas & Remael 2021: 202). They categorise culture-bound notions as geographical, ethnographic, socio-political, and intertextual cultural references.

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Realia are also referred to as culture-bound terms, culture bumps, culture-specific items, which Espindola & Matielo (2011) and Ranzato (2016) call culture-specific references. In Ramière’s interpretation: “Culture-specific material […] encompass[es] the verbal and non-verbal (visual and auditory) signs which […] refer to objects or concepts that are specific to the original sociocultural context of the film – i.e. that, at the time of distribution, do not exist, or deviate significantly in their connotational value from similar objects and concepts in the target culture(s) considered” (Ramière 2006: 155).

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The fictional counterparts of realia are irrealia: “realia tied to a fictional setting, whose effect is to define and determine the fictional cultural, geographical and historical settings” (Loponen 2009: 167). From a translation methodological point of view, the translation of realia and irrealia raises very similar questions, and the translator is faced with the same dilemmas. Therefore, in the present paper, when we talk about the translation of “realia”, the translation of irrealia is also meant.

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Although culture-specific expressions are often considered as not having a (constant) equivalent in the TL, it may not always be the case. “They may in fact not have one on the langue level; however, translators usually do find the right expressions, they also have a choice between several translation methods”, so “on the parole level, they are translatable” (Mujzer-Varga 2009: 5–7).

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The translation of realia, or, more precisely, the translation method the translator applies in culture-specific notions, has a great impact on the reception. “If realia are simply translated into the target language, then the translation will make no sense without footnotes. If the translator tries to find some target language realia with a similar function and uses that instead, then the informative, culture-enriching function of translation is endangered, since realia contain abundant information about the culture, life style, habits, self-esteem, etc. of the given language community, and the aim of translation, sometimes, is precisely to reflect this information.” (Klaudy 2007: 232)

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So, the translator has to take into consideration whether they want to alienate the target audience (TA) from the SC or bring the SC closer to them, and while doing so, they have to aim for fluidity and smoothness. “A fluent translation is immediately recognizable and intelligible, ‘familiarized,’ domesticated, not ‘disconcerting[ly]’ foreign, capable of giving the reader unobstructed ‘access to great thoughts,’ to what is present in the original.” Under the regime of fluent translating, the translator works to make his or her work “invisible,” producing the illusory effect of transparency that simultaneously masks its status as an illusion: the translated text seems “natural, i.e., not translated” (Venuti 1995: 5).

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What method the translator uses, however, is not generally applicable to the particular (ir)realia in every context; the choice of practice is greatly context-dependent (Espindola & Vasconcellos 2006; Ramière 2006), and not only based on the SL term. As Klaudy (2007) points it out, the translator has to decide “consciously or intuitively” in each and every case what method to apply considering issues like “the knowledge and evaluative relationship the target language society possesses about the given realia and not the actual source language norm” (Klaudy 2007: 233), but it may also be influenced by the limitations posed by the genre itself: “[i]n view of the immediacy of film and the technical constraints of audiovisual language transfer, this may imply giving priority to communicative translation over cultural considerations” (Ramière 2006: 161).
 
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