In this article, the author chooses pragmatic substitution and reference to show how non-coincidence across languages on such a specific point may make translational equivalence difficult to achieve. Analyzing the non-structural use of deictic pro-forms (English ‘this’/’that’, Russian ‘eto’, Bulgarian ‘takova’) to avoid explicitness or lengthy explanation, the author finds no sharp boundary between pragmatic reference/substitution, and structural substitution, which she ascribes to the analytic nature of English and (to some extent) Bulgarian, in contrast with Russian.