Abstract: The subject of the research in the article are the principles of literary translation of foreign authors in our country. The object of the research are the works of famous Soviet and Russian translators of foreign literature, as well as the views on the translation art of such outstanding researchers as K. I. Chukovsky, I. A. Kashkin, S. F. Goncharenko, A.V. Fedorov, E. G. Etkind, etc. Special attention is paid to the problem of translating folk speech. As an example, the authors of the article consider translations of the "Poem about One Day" by the Spanish poet and thinker Antonio Machado, made by I. Tynyanova and N. Gorskaya. Biographical, descriptive and cultural-historical methods were used in the work. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the fact that for the first time a comparative analysis of two versions of the translation of one of the works of A. Machado is carried out. The relevance of this article is due to the importance of the problems of literary translation in Russian culture, the insufficient level of research of A. Machado's creative heritage in Russian Spanish studies and the lack of a detailed analysis of translations of his works into Russian. The main conclusions of the work confirm the refusal of domestic translators of foreign poetry from the "literalist" approach to translation, the desire to convey the spirit, images, and rhythm of the poetic text by means of the native language. This is also confirmed by the comparison of two ways of transmitting live folk colloquial speech in the analyzed translations.