In order to carry out a complete or partial adaptation the translator has to be aware of the differences between SL and TL conventions in a specific text type. Very often the translator or teacher of translation has no alternative but to perform the comparative analysis that reveals these differences himself as there are still few translation-oriented contrastive studies of text type conventions. This paper aims to outline some results of a small-scale comparative study of text type conventions in Russian and German Instructions for use. The author also gives an interpretation of the way they are dealt with in certain forms of translation.