This article provides a contrastive analysis of the major strategies used to build euphemistic expressions in the Russian and English languages. The study relies on the theoretical works of famous linguists, and uses examples from the English and Russian dictionaries of euphemisms. The article combines quantitative and qualitative analyses, with pragmatic and contrastive approaches to compare the way of forming euphemisms in both languages. The results of the research show that methods such as circumlocution, metaphor, metonymy, substitution as well as generalization are observed in the usage of both languages at a similar level. Understatement and abbreviation, however, are used more often in the Russian language due to its derivational morphology, while overstatement and flippancy were found to be more characteristic to the English language. The findings reveal that the differences between the two languages can create difficulties in the translation process, since some types of euphemisms formed in one language do not have direct equivalent in the other one, requiring the translator to find alternative solutions.