The author's analysis of three different (Assamese) translations of two of Shakespeare’s plays, supplemented by an analysis of translations of English texts belonging to different genres, seems to suggest that any translation of literary texts embedded in unfamiliar cultural contexts involves some kind of subtle intervention. Such interventions may entail retention of some 'foreignness' in the translated texts, and continuous adjustment and re-contextualization in their construction for retaining some trace of the stylistic/rhetorical features of the original. The analysis throws up evidence for such universal features as explicitation, normalization and simplification. Explicitation was manifest in the use of interjections, explanatory paraphrases, and extra-information. Normalization in some cases resulted in sentences that were syntactically more complex than the original ones. Simplification was mostly noticed in the breaking up of long sentences into several shorter ones. It also appears that elucidation or expansion of an original expression is a likely candidate for a universal.