This paper discusses the need to distinguish between collective and individual styles in literary translation, where meaning is present in form. If meaning is to be interpreted through the study of an author's style - itself embedded in a collective style which has its own rules -, a translation must respect the contract between an author and his/her own language, no matter how subversive it may be. However, the resources of the target-language are different, and a restructuration cannot be avoided: the translator must rethink the boundaries between collective and individual styles in his/her own language, as well as the choices they involve. Although this approach to translation seems to attach great importance to the signifier, it in fact founds an interpretative approach, which focuses on the signified as it is disclosed by the interplay of the signifiers. An analysis of Jane Urquhart's "Hotel Verbano" follows, which shows that the progressive depersonalization of the narrative is mirrored in its very syntax, particularly in the use of its tenses and modes. Hence the need to map the boundaries within which Urquhart registers meaning in the forms she uses, so that the translator can reinvent this landscape in French.