Objective. The objective of the article is the definition of the concept and specifics of artistic translation; consideration of the concepts of translation adequacy and equivalence, as well as translation transformations; identifying and clarifying the validity of the use of lexical-semantic transformations in the process of translating O. Henry's story "The Last Leaf" into Ukrainian performed by M. Dmytrenko. Methods. The main scientific results are obtained using such general scientific and special research methods as the analysis and generalization of scientific literature on the problems of artistic translation and the application of translation transformations; theoretical generalization, analysis and synthesis; an integral approach to the study of linguistic phenomena; comparative, descriptive and analytical methods. Results. The analysis of scientific literature makes it possible to reveal the meaning of artistic translation, which is always a challenge for the translator, as it requires not only a deep knowledge of the original language, the vocabulary of the translated language and thorough knowledge of literary studies, but also significant skills in translation techniques. Due to the inconsistency of individual elements in the original language and the language of translation, differences in the grammatical structures of languages, stylistic features of a specific text, full correspondence is impossible. Therefore, the terms "adequacy" and "equivalence" are used to indicate the relationship between the source text and the final text. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to achieve complete correspondence, identity in the process of translation. In cases where there are no regular equivalents in the target language or they cannot be used in the context, the translator must resort to transformations. After considering different classifications of translation transformations and analyzing Henry's story "The Last Leaf" for the category of lexical-semantic transformations, we can come to the conclusion that contextual substitution, decompression and descriptive translation are most often used by the translator. This is caused, first of all, by the wide lexical potential of the translation language, the need to adapt the source text to the norms of the translation language, as well as reproduce non-equivalent vocabulary and words and phrases that do not have regular counterparts in the target language. Summing up the analysis, it can be noted that the problem of literary translation is complex and controversial, because it is a co-creation of the translator and the author, the success of which depends on the latter's creativity and skillful use of the tools of translation transformations