The article deals with the identification of elliptic structures in French and Portuguese texts, and with the description of the transfer process for translation into German. The elliptic structures that are discussed appear in written language and are mainly drawn from specialised communication in the field of economy, administration and law. The article is based on the proposition that the elliptic structures constitute a translation problem as copying these elliptic structures in the German target text would be contradictory to the grammatical and stylistic rules of the German language. The translation of the elliptic structures under research requires translation rules as they can be found in specialist literature in the field of Translation Studies.