Francophone literature is embedded with cultural and linguistic elements strongly tied to the country from which it originates. These elements, called realia, are a common challenge in translation as they do not have a direct equivalent in the target language. This paper examines realia in the Italian translations of Yasmina Khadra’s crime novels Le Dingue au bistouri, Morituri, Double blanc and La Part du mort. The study focuses on four types of cultural references — real and mythological figures, food, religion, and other political and socio-cultural elements — with the aim of describing the different strategies employed by the translators and their overall approach to the original text. Comparing the translations has shown that changes in publishers and translators have had a significant impact on the final result due to differences in editorial approaches and the individual strategies employed by translators when dealing with culture-specific elements. The lack of a unified translation strategy has resulted in a fragmented portrayal of Khadra’s crime novels in Italian compared to the unity that can be found in the French books.
