The study focuses on the lexical units of Russian culture that have no equivalent in English and cause misunderstandings in cross-cultural communication. A. Chekhov’s plays are very rich in linguistic units containing encoded cultural information, which make the texts ambiguous or incomprehensible, especially for readers from different cultural backgrounds. The article investigates the specific concepts of Russian culture in A. Chekhov’s plays: “Uncle Vanya”, “The Sea-Gull”, “The Cherry Orchard” and “Three Sisters”. The purpose of the paper is to study the features of interlingual lacunae types in A. Chekhov’s plays and analyse the discrepancies in their translation into Russian and English. Four hundred and ten interlingual lacunae are analysed and divided into three main groups: linguistic, ethnographic and zero. The results show that the most numerous group is stylistic lacunae due to the expressiveness of A. Chekhov and the linguistic means used by the playwright. Absolute, vacant, vector ethnographic, associative and zero lacunae are less frequent. The study reveals that vector and absolute ethnographic lacunae are the most difficult for translation and only experienced translators are able to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings in their interpretation.

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