The article focuses on rendering non-equivalent lexis in English language fiction and nonfiction texts. Research has been done on the basis of the following texts: Odessa Tales by Isaac Babel, Moonlight in Odessa by Janet Skeslien Charles, journals – The Odessa Review and The Awesome Odesa and Internet resources. The final objective of the work is to describe local Odesa realia and systematize the ways of their rendering. The objective determined the tasks of the research: to analyse different scholar definitions of the term “realia” and formulate own definition; to outline relevant for linguistics and translation studies classifications of realia and the ways of their rendering, to single out 400 examples (obtained by random selection) from the texts given; to determine the place of each realia in semantic classifications and the classification of rendering realia. Our study relies substantially on the application of linguistic descriptive methodology and devices. The research gives recommendations to the enhancement of the S. Vlahov and S. Florin’s classification as it ignores some reality phenomena. The paper singles out the most frequent kinds of Odesa realia-localisms and the ways of their rendering. The work discovers that realia concerned society and politics and loan translation, half-calque and mix translation as ways of rendering realia are the most frequently used in fiction as well as non-fiction texts. The research highlights the ways of rendering realia which occurred to be omitted in the S. Vlahov and S. Florin’s classification. The prospects of the research lie in elaborating a bilingual glossary of the Odesa realia to fulfil professional needs of translators, interpreters, guides, culture and history researchers.