To understand why proximity can be more problematic than extreme distance, let us return briefly to "La Movida". The French translation of the Spanish term, geo-culturally the closest, was by far the most complex and drawn out, and thus presumably the most difficult to produce. This might be explained by the greater knowledge, interest, and competition ensuing from a shared geopolitical border, across which there is considerable embedding. If one knows almost nothing about such embeddedness, texts may well radically change their value in distribution, but they will effectively become far less complicated to translate. Despite performance analysis, complexity can result more from cultural proximity than from extreme distance.

Does this conclusion contradict our comments on performatives and belonging? Consider for a moment the essential difference between short-distance distribution ("La Movida" from Spain to France) and longer-distance distribution ("La Movida" from Spain to Newsweek). In the first case, complexity results from the numerous levels on which the two countries are connected and interact; the receivers of the translation are likely to adopt a participative attitude to the text. In the second case, however, where there are fewer contacts and the distribution is directed towards a more restricted and possibly more ignorant locale. In such long-distance distribution, receivers tend to be positioned as observers; the problems of embeddedness and belonging become almost irrelevant. There can be no doubt that a text like "La Movida" will retain more of its original belonging in cases of short-distance distribution, but this is precisely why proximity creates more problems for localization. In the case of long-distance movements, where transferable belonging tends to zero and purposes are more highly focused, renditions may be grossly exotic, inappropriate, or appropriative (cf. "The Happening"), but they are considerably easier to produce.

Embeddedness is ultimately resistance to the distribution of texts. The way to overcome this resistance is usually textual elaboration or explicitness, the bringing to the surface of presuppositions and the reasonable cleaning away of connotations. It follows that, in order to make a text more transferable, additional work must be invested to make it more explicit, just as an additional initial charge is required if electricity is to be transferred over a considerable distance. It also follows that, if this additional work has not been carried out in internationalization, it can be invested at the point of translation.

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