The article considers the peculiarities of adaptive translation of phraseological units from Russian into Chinese and English based on the material of the literary text «Kak zakalyalas' stal'» (Eng. ‘How the Steel was Tempered’ / ‘The Making of a Hero’) by Nikolay Ostrovsky (Eng. Nikolai Ostrovsky / Nicholas Ostrovski). The scientific novelty of the article is obvious since it concisely presents a comparative analysis of the phraseological systems in three languages: Russian, Chinese, and English. The methodological basis for the study of the phraseological map of the literary text “How the Steel was Tempered" by Nikolai Ostrovsky is a comparative analysis and study of two variants of translation into Chinese and two variants of translation into English. The authors also actively use such methods as an interpretive and descriptive analysis and some others. The main criteria of phraseology – stability and semantic uniqueness – of the compared phraseological units with the description of their national identity are presented. The phraseological system of any language has the necessary expression for the emotional impact on the recipient. The article consistently demonstrates the possibilities of transferring the nationally marked phraseological corpus of the Russian language to Chinese and English. In the end of the paper, it is concluded that the difficulties of adaptive translation of phraseological units met in the literary text “How the Steel was Tempered" by Nikolai Ostrovsky are due to the fact that most of them relate to the colloquial style, which imposes additional requirements on the translator associated with the need for a deep understanding of Russian culture and language traditions.