The present paper is part of a more comprehensive and extended re-search project which seeks to investigate and quantitatively and qualitatively analyse the data obtained with respect to the diminutive forms attested in the poetic works of Robert Burns and their respective translation equivalents in Russian, French and German. What we present here is a pilot study on the diminutive forms in the original poetic texts and in their translations into the three languages. The aim is to investigate the types of form-formative patterns of expressing diminutiveness and their function in the respective languages. The discussion opens with a brief outline of the specific features of the category of diminutiveness in the studied languages.