When Letters Become Cultural Objects: Orthographic Realia in Translation

Why Unique Letters Are Not Just Symbols — but Cultural Markers

Language learners are often told that translation problems arise mostly from vocabulary. Words like samovar, Bundestag, or hygge are commonly used to illustrate what translation theory calls realia — cultural elements that exist in one linguistic environment but do not have an exact equivalent in another.

But there is a layer of language that traditional translation theory rarely addresses.

Not words.
Not grammar.
But letters themselves.

Across languages, many alphabets contain characters that exist only within that particular linguistic system. When these characters move into another language, they cannot always be reproduced directly. Instead, they must be approximated, simplified, or replaced.

At that moment, letters behave exactly like realia.

They become orthographic realia — cultural elements embedded in the writing system of a language.

This article proposes extending the traditional concept of realia to include these elements of writing.

Traditional Realia: A Quick Reminder

In classical translation theory, realia refer to culturally specific elements such as:

historical institutions
food and clothing
social concepts
cultural objects

Examples include:

samovar
kimono
Bundestag
matryoshka

These items are difficult to translate because they belong to a particular cultural environment.

But the same mechanism appears at another level of language: the alphabet itself.

When Letters Stop Being Universal

At first glance, alphabets seem stable and universal. Many languages use Latin or Cyrillic scripts, and it may appear that their letters correspond to one another.

In reality, each language modifies its writing system to reflect its own phonetics and history. These modifications create letters that exist only within one linguistic system.

Consider several examples.

Ukrainian

The Ukrainian alphabet contains letters that do not exist in Russian or many other Cyrillic-based systems:

When Ukrainian names or words are transferred into other languages, these letters cannot always be reproduced exactly.

For instance:

Їжак → Yizhak
Ґанок → Hanok or Ganok

The original character disappears and is replaced by an approximation.

Polish

Polish is famous for its complex diacritics and distinctive letters:

The name Łukasz becomes Lukasz or Lukash in international contexts.

The letter ł represents a sound similar to English w, yet in many transliteration systems it is simply reduced to l.

A unique letter is replaced by an approximation.

German

German introduces its own orthographic features:

ä, ö, ü
ß

The famous ß (Eszett) has no direct equivalent in most languages.

When German names move into international contexts, we often see transformations such as:

Straße → Strasse
Müller → Mueller

Again, a culturally specific letter must be adapted.

Belarusian

Belarusian contains a particularly distinctive letter:

Known as u neskladovaje, it has no exact equivalent in most alphabets.

Transliteration replaces it with u or ŭ, depending on the system.

Turkish

Turkish demonstrates another striking example.

The language distinguishes between:

These are three separate letters, not variations.

When Turkish words are written in English or other languages, this distinction is often lost.

Icelandic

Icelandic preserves ancient letters rarely found elsewhere:

When these letters appear in international contexts, they are often replaced with d, th, or dh.

When an Alphabet Becomes a Cultural System

These examples reveal an important principle.

Writing systems are not neutral tools. They are historical and cultural constructions.

Each language adapts its alphabet to represent its own sound system and cultural development.

As a result, alphabets accumulate elements that cannot be easily transferred into other languages.

At that moment, letters function like cultural artifacts.

Orthographic Realia

This leads to a useful extension of translation theory.

Alongside lexical realia, we can identify orthographic realia — elements of writing systems that are unique to a particular language and cannot be transferred directly into another.

These include:

1. Graphemic Realia

Unique letters belonging to a specific alphabet.

Examples:

ß (German)
ł (Polish)
ї (Ukrainian)
ў (Belarusian)

2. Diacritic Realia

Characters defined by accents or diacritics.

Examples:

ñ (Spanish)
č (Czech)
ą / ę (Polish)

When these marks disappear in transliteration, meaning or pronunciation may change.

3. Alphabetic Realia

Entire writing systems that differ structurally.

Examples include:

Arabic script
Hebrew script
Georgian script

These systems cannot be transferred letter-for-letter into Latin alphabets without interpretation.

4. Orthographic Conventions

Even spelling rules themselves may behave as realia.

For instance:

German capitalization of nouns
French accent marks
Turkish dotted and dotless i

Such conventions carry linguistic meaning that may vanish when transferred into another system.

What Happens in Translation

When orthographic realia appear, translators typically rely on three strategies.

Transliteration

Replacing letters with visually similar symbols.

Example:

Łukasz → Lukasz

Phonetic approximation

Reproducing the sound rather than the letter.

Example:

Łukasz → Lukash

Simplification

Removing diacritics entirely.

Example:

Müller → Muller

Each strategy involves loss of information.

Just like lexical realia, orthographic realia require interpretation rather than direct translation.

Why This Matters for Language Learners

Language learners often assume that writing systems simply represent sounds.

In reality, alphabets encode history, identity, and cultural development.

Understanding orthographic realia helps learners:

recognize why spelling changes across languages
understand transliteration differences
avoid pronunciation mistakes
appreciate the cultural dimension of writing systems

Letters are not just symbols.

They are traces of linguistic history.

Language Is More Than Words

Translation theory has long focused on words as the main carriers of culture.

But culture lives in deeper layers of language as well.

It lives in:

sounds
writing systems
spelling conventions
alphabet structures

Sometimes even a single letter can carry cultural identity.

When that letter crosses linguistic borders, it becomes something more than a character.

It becomes a cultural object of translation.

An orthographic realia.

Author: Tymur Levitin
Founder & Director, Levitin Language School

Global Learning. Personal Approach.