The Russian ethnopsycholinguistic concept of lacuna - the lacuna theory - for the analysis and translation of literary texts is almost unknown in western intercultural studies and translation research. In the article a precise definition of lacuna is given in comparison with gaps in the lexical system, which are mainly static differences between semantic units of both cultures. Lacuna, however, is seen as a dynamic semantic quantity, which does not resolve the static semantic differences between cultures, it depends on a number of contexts and situations of the intercultural communication. The author also discusses the ways in which this model can be applied in the theory of translation and sees these possibilities in the hermeneutic translation and cultural theory of translation (theory of skopos). The model is suitable as hermeneutic method for analyzing original texts before translation. The new definition of lacuna proposes solutions to the discussion about the term of equivalence of translation, which can be applied to contrastive comparison as the model of lacuna can be to translation. [Based on abstract in book$