Corpus-based research in translation studies initially focused on similarities and differences between translated and non-translated text. The initial impetus for building and investigating corpora of translated text was to identify patterns which are specific to translated text in general. A number of researchers are beginning to turn their attention to the question of individual variation within any corpus of translations. The author focuses on this particular strand of investigation and outlines briefly two small-case studies which highlight such variation: one based on non-literary material from the European Commission and the other on literary material from a subset of the Translational English Corpus.