Why does a sociological and historical approach to localization require much more than linguistics. The very term“ localization ”is replacing“translation”precisely in order to involve more than language (not that we believe“translation”itself should then be regarded as a mere language problem). Our call for more-than-linguistics here is not quite the same as those who stress the importance of dialogue boxes, system re-engineering, extra-linguistic semiotic systems, cultural knowledge, or intuitive competence. What worries us more is that linguistic models fail to conceptualize distribution as a bridging of material time and space. No movement is visible as long as the analyst places two texts side-by-side, calls one input and the other output, and attempts to compare the language used in both. The results of such analyses are often of interest, but they will not automatically advance the materialist view we are trying to develop here.
The most brutal way to subvert textual analysis is to work from the level of material coordinates, as has been done with move from radiophonic extraterritorial French in 1940 to printed British English in 1966. This is to analyze localization from the perspective of distribution. At the same time, distribution itself can be approached from the simple relation between two texts, or even on the basis of one specifically localized text. How might such an approach reach a materialist goal?
The most subtle method here is to consider the absent alternatives to any completed localization. If a localizer has produced a certain text, their work can be represented as a choice not to produce one or more possible alternatives. For instance, we might say Major Spears produced the hypotactic citation in (2) as a conscious negation of the far more obvious literalism of (3).
Any series of possible localizations is necessarily bordered by two radical alternatives, which are always possible and pertinent:
– Non-distribution, or the absence of the text in a given locale;
– Non-localization, here understood as distribution without localization, in which the new locale receives exactly the same textual forms as an anterior locale.
That is, Major Spears could have ignored De Gaulle’s speech altogether (nondistribution) or he could have cited it in De Gaulle’s French only (non-localization). Working from the available texts, we can thus locate distribution through conceptual negation rather than through reference to coordinates in time and space. This approach will enable us to define various kinds of source texts.
If a text or reports of a text have not been distributed to a certain point, how can anyone at that point know the text could have been distributed there? Indeed, how could anyone know the text exists? In all honesty, non-distribution can only represent the position located through conceptual negation of a movement that has actually taken place. Only once Spears has effective access to De Gaulle's text can it become meaningful to consider what would have happened if such contact had not been made. Only through distribution can the point of non-distribution be projected as the anterior position of a text. This looks like beating about the bush, but negative analysis of this kind does enable us to talk about a point of origin, a "source", even though, ontologically, we cannot claim the existence of any such thing. Further, that "source" may operate in practice, in the way we think about texts, even when we have only the faintest idea of the material locales involved.
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