Quote Originally Posted by bitpicker
It is no different if you translate English or Russian to German or the other way round. There are many things which you can translate word for word but the result isn't a normal sentence in the other language. The progressive form (English -ing) doesn't even exist in German at all (nor does it in Russian). Neither English nor German have perfective verbs; neither English nor Russian have a subjunctive form quite like German, nor quite the same ability to concatenate words to form new ones.
In Russian the English form verb+ing according to

1.adjectival participles / действительные причастие
A reading girl
Читающая девочка

2. noun formed from a verb / отглагольное существительное (it is like English Gerund)
I like reading.
Я люблю чтение (also you can translate it as ‘Я люблю читать’, but if you make exact grammatical translate, it will be ‘Я люблю чтение’. When I said ‘Word for word translation’ (see my preceding post) I meant situations like this)

3.imperfective verb (like English continuous verb) / глагол несовершенного вида
when she was reading a book ……
Когда она читала книгу ….

I hope this little explanation will be able to help to persons which are learning Russian.