This paper presents the rudiments of a body of analytic techniques for translation which the author collectively calls "trajections". A trajection is any of a number of elementary translational patterns into which a given source-target text pairing may partially be resolved. In this study nine elementary patterns are presented: equation and substitution (matching), divergence and convergence (zigzagging), amplification and reduction (recrescence), diffusion and condensation (repackgaging) and reordering. Each of the nine elementary trajections is accompanied by a scheme and a verbal characterization.