This paper examines the facts and reasons underlying the various translations of English it-clefts into German. Corpora of translated English-German texts reveal that only about a third of English it-clefts are translated with the German equivalent, a Spaltsatz. This may in part be due to differences in the restrictions the two languages place on the focused XP with regard to both grammatical function and category. It is notable that even where the German Spaltsatz is a grammatically possible translation, other structures are frequently employed. This shows that factors such as the discourse function(s) of cleft sentences play a decisive role in selecting stylistically well-formed translations. The authors state that: The main discourse function of English it-clefts - the focusing of an XP element - may not only be translated into German with a Spaltsatz, but can also be presented adequately by introducing specific word orders, focusing particles, or both.