From the viewpoint of the translational act, the literary text is seen as emphasising aesthetic-stylistic aspects, so that the importance of the author’s language is comparable to that of the text content. By applying Aubert’s model to six American novels and their respective translations into Portuguese, it was possible to carry out a comparative analysis of the linguistic, stylistic and cultural similarities and differences between the source texts and the target texts. From two different levels of data analysis, the authors observed how literary translation demands an increased use of modulation in order to convey the source language writers’ themes and choice of words within the stylistic possibilities of the target language. On the other hand, the percentage of literal translation and transposition is significantly higher. In spite of Vinay’s statement that literal translation may lead to mistakes arising from false cognates and also the belief held by some theoreticians that adaptation is widely used in translation, mainly in literary translation, the fact is that more than half of the translated texts in the corpus are literal translations.