The grammatical structure of language is an important part of its overall system, no less important, in fact, than its lexicon or vocabulary. The elements of the grammatical structure, such as affixes forms of inflection and derivation, syntactic patterns, word order, function words, etc., serve to carry meanings which are usually referred to as " grarnmatical '' or "structural" meanings, as distinct from lexical meanings. The rendering of these meanings in the process of translation is an important problem relating to the general problem of translation equivalence which must be considered at length.
Grammatical forms of different languages only very seldom coincide fully as to the scope of their meaning and function. As a rule there is only partial equivalence, that is, the grammatical mea- nings expressed by grammatical forms, though seemingly identical, of two different languages coincide only in part of their meaning and differ in other parts of the same meanings. Thus, for instance, the category of number of nouns in English and in Russian seems to coincide and, indeed, does coincide in very many cases of its use: cf. table - стол, tables - столы, ETC. However, there are many instances where this is not the case, in other words, where an English plural form is rendered through a Russian singular form and vice versa; this is especially common among the so called Singularia and Pluralia Tantum, that is those nouns that have only a Singular and Plural form whose distribution is often arbitrary and motivated only historically. Compares oats - овес , peas - горох , onions - лук , cherries - вишня, (used collectively), outskirts (of town) - окраина, billiards - биллиард, measles - корь; and OF THE OTHER hand, money -деньги, ink - чернила, information - новости, данные etc. Also, the form of Number in two languages often do not coincide when the noun is accompanied by a numeral, thus in Russian all nouns preceded by numeral двадцать один, сто тридцать один - and other ending in один are used in the singular form while in English in corresponding patterns a Plural form must be used: twenty one tables, one hundred and thirty one passengers, etc.
Another example is the category of tense. Both English and Russian distinguish the form of the predicate verb as Present and past, their general grammatical meanings being, on the whole, iden- tical cf. He lives in Moscow- Он живет в Москве, he lived in Moscow - он жил в Москве, ETC. However, in certain cases the Tense forms of the two verbs - English and Russian - do not coin- cide, thus, for instance, in English there exists a grammar rule "Sequence of Tenses" according to which the predicate verb in the subordinate object clause following the main clause in which a Past form is used must, with a few exemptions, also be used in the Past form, where as in Russian this is not so and a Present form is quite common in the same position: He said he lived in Moscow - Он сказал, что живет а Москве
The difference is Even more striking when we consider other grammatical categories which semantic content and function diverge to a greater extent that in the examples given above. Take for instance, the category of Gender . Russian distinguishes three genders: Masculine, Feminine and Neuter which are formally expressed in the following ways:

through agreement e.g., этот юноша, эта девушка, дедушка пришел, бабушка пришла.
by the inflectional forms of the noun itself, e.g., CTOЛ (masc) -zero ending, "hard" stem; вода (fem) - the ending -a, OKHO (neut) - the ending - 0, etc.
by means of pronominal substitution, e.g., зверь (masc.)-он, дверь (fem.) - она, etc.

The meaning inherent in the grammatical form itself стол - table, столы - tables or живет - lives, жил - lived (see examples above).
The lexical character of the word or word-group used in this or that form. Thus, the use of the Plural form in Russian is impossible with certain nouns while possible with others: cf. workers of all industries - рабочие всех отраслей промышленности , other philosophies - другие философские течения (направления). Here the grammatical meaning of plurality has to be rendered, lexically as the corresponding Russian nouns lack the plural form.
factors of style, for instance, both English and. Russian have the Passive form of the verb, however, in Russian the use of this form is mainly confined to the literary or bookish (formal) style. Correspondingly, though the English Passive structure such as "At the station he was met by his brother" can, theoretically speaking, be translated as на станции он был встречен братом we feel that latter translation is unacceptable as it sounds too formal and can hardly be used in colloquial speech or in the style of fiction. The proper version would be: На станции его встретил брат.
In official language, for instance, in newspaper reports, this turn of speech is quite acceptable: cf. At the station the delegation was met by a group of students - На станции делегация была встречена группой студентов.
Another example: both English and Russian make use of the so called Historical Present (the present tense used to denote past events); however it is only in English that this form is employed in newspaper headline. Consequently, the headline "Prominent Scientist Dies" cannot be rendered as Известный ученый умирает taking into account the fact Russian headlines are usually nominal in character, i.e., formed as Noun phrases, it is preferable to translate the above headline as Смерть известного ученого.
Frequency of use. Speaking about this factor, the American linguist and translator E. Nida writes: Rare forms of words may also constitute serious obstacles to a proper communication load. For example, translators often find convenient formal parallels between constructions in the SL and the TL, and, regardless of the relative frequency of such constructions in the language concerned, endeavor to match the forms more or less automatically. This both source and receptor languages may have passive forms of words but in the source language they may be relatively frequent, while in the receptor language they are rare. (English and Russian are precisely the case). If under these considerations one attempts to translate every source language passive by corresponding passive in the receptor language, the result will be an inevitable overloading of the communication.

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