Linguistic Distance Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Although the conceptual toolbox of translation studies (TS) has grown more and more inclusive in recent decades and despite the great variety of spatial metaphors that have been used for translation through the ages, explicit discussions of the seemingly obvious idea of distance (linguistic, cultural, temporal, etc.) are scarce in the TS literature. Why, then, should the concept now be given any thought? When I started translating from both English and Japanese into French, I soon noticed the differences between the two practices. In trying to generalize the problem beyond the case of these three languages, I quickly became interested in the concept of distance, especially linguistic and cultural, and in the effects it has on translation. In short, is distance a factor that influences translating and thus translations? As naïve as the question may seem, it is genuinely thorny as some will dismiss it right away for lack of relevance, while others will answer without hesitation in the affirmative, or in the negative. Moreover, in reading TS texts, I have noticed that although distance is quite often evoked and even invoked, paradoxically, it is rarely defined, objectified or problematized, it does not have the status of “concept” in the discipline, and very few studies overtly make use of it. Yet, I believe it is precisely the countless differences between languages and cultures—which I think of as a whole and refer to as distance—that make translation not only necessary but, above all, possible. However, while I am confident that translation is always achievable no matter the breadth of the gap to be bridged, this does not mean that the processes and the products will be “equivalent.” On a broader level, distance manifests itself in a wealth of relationships found at the very heart of translation: between languages and cultures, of course, but also between regions, periods, societies, audiences, texts, people, etc. I thus think the concept can be put to work and operationalized in various ways to better understand or explain a wide array of areas and phenomena germane to translation (language learning and teaching, machine translation, global translation flows, etc.), well beyond the “narrow” act of translating. I therefore aim to argue not only that the concept of distance (especially between languages and cultures) is relevant to translation (studies), but also that its thorough consideration is long overdue. [...]