The focus of this article is on the role of translation in the Westernisation of eighteenth-century Russia. The emphasis is placed on the integration of Russian science into the European global science function system (Luhmann). In the global science system, translation played a part in resolving the paradox of the Enlightenment agenda, which was how to make possible the exchange of knowledge in the scholarly community (mainly in Latin), and at the same time make that knowledge accessible to any other, non-academic, linguistic community (in Russian). Reports of the Saint-Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Russian renderings of scientific terminology and non-verbal scientifically relevant phenomena are analysed as examples.