This research deals with the specific features of socially based varieties of the Russian language, namely prostorechie and prison jargon, used in Zuleikha Opens her Eyes by G. Yakhina and their translation into French and Dutch. The identified translation techniques included sociolinguistic equivalence, partial equivalence, standardization, calque and adaptation. The analysis revealed that the dominant strategy used to convey the elements of sub-standard Russian varieties into English is standardization. However, its use varies subject to the combination between the source language variety and the target language. In the Dutch translation, this technique is employed to translate 52% of argotic lexical units and 44% of prostorechie elements, i.e. about half of all the cases. This dominance is not so strong in the French translation – 11% of argotic lexical units and 42% of prostorechie elements, i.e. about more than a quarter of all the cases. As for argotic lexical units, translators recur to different techniques. In 41% of cases, both of them opt for partial equivalence, but argotic equivalents abound in French (47%), contrary to Dutch (6%). Standardization is used for 11% of cases in French, and for 53% of cases in Dutch. The translator into Dutch recurs to argotic lexical units in order to render 10% of prostorechie elements. Calques are used to render language errors, and rimes are conveyed through adaptation.