The natural syntactic organisation of elements, characteristic of each language, constitutes a word order restriction. This often means that the thematic organisation of a text has to be abandoned when translated if the target text is to read naturally and smoothly without distorting the information of the original. But thematisation is, above all, a discoursal phenomenon, and its analysis must provide an account of thematic organisation in the service of particular rhetorical purposes which should shine through the translated text. In the present paper the author is concerned with the study of both thematic selection and thematic progression as determining factors for the consolidation and maintenance of texture in a process of translation. Texts in English and Spanish taken from a bilingual in-flight magazine illustrate the discussion.