Translation can be regarded as a special instance of comparative statement in linguistics although it has certain drawbacks, for at best the statement of translation equivalents is statistically probably correct; however 1/1 correspondence cannot be expected at all. Translation equivalents have to be accounted for with the description of context, and for the total statement the language facts are dealt with at the linguistic levels of grammar, lexis, context, and phonology. The process of translation primarily rests upon the operation of language events at the level of grammar. It starts at the lowest grammatical unit with the selection of (statistically) the most probable equivalent. The deviation factors in both the source and the target languages are responsible for the exceptions. These may be due to lexical and/or grammatical features of the respective languages, and are taken into consideration all along the rank scale of units, working from the lowest unit upwards. Instances of the translation equivalents of the English sb. way in Serbo-Croatian serve as a proof that description is the basis of comparison and related activities, and emphasize the need for further research into the nature of the operation of language events in grammar and lexis.
