The article starts with a discussion of the relationships between linguistic and literary approaches to translation and makes a plea for a new analytical model for translated texts. The idea of a 'tertium comparationis' - a discursive matrix applicable to both source and target texts, and capable of laying bare the significance of such shifts as may be observed in translated narratives - favours a view of translations as texts that possess a proper identity, express aesthetic choices of the translator and correlate with literary life in general. The second part of the articles gives an account of shifts occurring in French translations of Flemish an German prose of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It takes into consideration a number of relevant narrative categories such as register, tense, reported speech, narration and character.