This paper explores the tension between maintenance of the thematic structure of the source text (ST) and the (im)possibility to produce translations faithful to the overall discourse structure of the original. The view of language expressed by Halliday's Functional Grammar (1985/ 1994), with its separate Textual component, provides the theoretical background. Nine translated texts (TT's) of one and the same source text (ST) are compared. The concepts of "markedness and unmarkedness" are drawn upon in the investigation. Points of convergence and divergence are examined and some factors suggested to account for changes in the thematic organization, which produced different rhetorical effects.
