The article analyzes the Italian translation of Dovlatov’s short story “The Show” by the slavist and Dovlatov researcher Laura Salmon. Of particular interest is how the translator puts across the four main styles in the short story: the military sociolect, the camp and prison argot, the social realism literature style and the individual style of the narrator. Special emphasis is laid on how the translator struggles to render the camp and prison argot, a phenomenon of Russian culture. Dovlatov’s prose is characterized by the ultimate neutrality of the text. Alternating neutral and stylistically marked pieces of text enables the author to get a comic effect. A distinguishing feature of this short story is rhythmically organized pieces of the characters’ communications. Coupled with the many facts of Russian reality, all this makes the translator’s work backbreaking and as a result, obstruct the adequate perception of the text by the Italian reader.