The achievement of functional equivalence in the translation of the dialogues of literary texts is discussed. The main objective of the study is to identify linguistic means of realization of the principle of functional equivalence in the translation of dialogues from Italian into Russian. To achieve the objective the comparative analysis is made of some fragments of the works of Italian writer A. Baricco "Ocean Sea", "Silk" and their translations into Russian language. The analysis identifies linguistic transformations, enabling to make in text of the translation the communicative effect created by the original. Special attention is paid to the characteristic function of the dialogue, consists in the fact that this kind of speech communication is actively involved in creating the characters. The author also dwells on the stylistic features of dialogues that reflect the main features of spoken language. The theoretical part of the work defines the concepts of functional equivalence within the framework of current research on translation, in this connection, the importance of retaining in the text the translation of a communicative effect which has been modeled by the author in the text source is underlined. It is concluded about how to recreate the communicative effect of a text in translation from Italian to Russian language. The relevance of the study is to describe lexical and grammatical means of realization of the principle of functional equivalence, which can be applied in translational work.