The paper deals with conventionalised emotive formulas for the expression of outrage, annoyance, astonishment and surprise. The empirical basis consists of emotive formulas from the dialogue passages in the detective novel ,Im Wald' by Nele Neuhaus and in its translation into Polish by Anna Urban and Miłosz Urban. The following paper focuses on two research questions: 1) What formulas are used to signal emotions such as outrage, annoyance, astonishment and surprise in dialogues in the literary text in German? 2) How are these formulas translated into Polish? Thus, the aim of the paper is, first of all, to collect emotive formulas expressing the mentioned emotions and to present the problems in their translation. The qualitative analysis of the research material was performed using MAXQDA software.