This thesis has the aim of examining the role of grammatical semantics in translating tenses from Russian to Estonian. Its first purpose is to examine the importance of the translator’s efforts to convey the semantics of the original’s temporality, and to determine where inevitable semantic losses occur and where such losses result from the fact that the author's intentions were not sufficiently taken into account or that the original was not fully understood, especially concerning the metaphorical use of tenses. Its second purpose is to clarify how tenses are used in the Estonian language since the metaphorical use of grammatical temporal forms in Estonian has not attracted enough attention so far. The material for this analysis is selected from Russian fiction and Estonian translations thereof, dating from the 19th, 20th and 21st century. The focus of the analysis are not the grammatical forms themselves, but rather the meanings that they express and how, according to these meanings, tenses are classified and studied.