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Abstract: This paper deals with the study of communicative structure used in English and Russian utterances. The study is aimed at analyzing Russian EFL learners’ ability to convey communicative meaning of English utterances using a variety of L1 (Russian) lexical and syntactic means when translating experimental materials from L2 (English) to their native tongue. The application of theoretical and empirical methods allowed registering and classifying translation variants and identifying problems caused by inability of the Russian subjects to understand the communicative meaning of the source sentences with a different location of the communicative center. The results prove that conveying the emotional coloring of a sentence is a challenging task for the Russian EFL learners. Comparative analysis of the data with the results from previous studies helps reveal the connection between the ability of the Russian speakers to identify the location of the communicative center and their ability to choose a correct translation strategy. The paper also addresses the issue of determining nucleus position; its role in conveying the communicative structure in written speech is crucial. A potential area for application of the results of the study concerns the EFL teaching methods, as they contribute to the development of foreign language communicative competence of non-linguistic students as well as their translation competence. Outlined are the perspectives for further research aimed at deeper understanding of the mechanisms determining nucleus position in non-native written speech and significance of prosodic means for conveying communicative meanings in the process of written and oral translation.