Florencio Alonso Jan 8, 2014:

hacer el vacío VS distanciarse Yo optaría por distanciarse, pero eso es solo porque en esta parte del mundo no es común usar la expresión "hacer el vacío", que veo que figura en la RAE y asumo que será natural en España. Por lo tanto creo que la opción dependerá del público objetivo. Si no está definido el público objetivo, entonces optaría por "distanciarse" que seguro que es más neutra y aceptada globalmente.

Charles Davis Jan 8, 2014:

In this particular case, you could argue that "hacer el vacío a alguien" (which basically means give someone the cold shoulder) is unsuitable, either because it is too colloquial (as Pablo Julián has suggested) or because it doesn't mean quite the same as "act distant". What I don't think you can do is to reject it merely because it doesn't use words that resemble those of the source expression.

Charles Davis Jan 8, 2014:

@ Mamelushen I don't understand what you mean by 'the issue at hand is the word "distant", and not "act"'. I thought the issue at hand was the expression "act distant". Translating this may involve a word choice for "act" followed by a word choice for "distant", or it may involve a choice of expression for the combination "act distant". The second possibility is something we have to consider all the time as translators. One-to-one mapping of words between SL and TL works all right quite a lot of the time, but it will often not produce the best result. This is surely obvious.

Cognate is very often equivalent. But non-cognate can be equivalent too, and can actually be more accurate. I don't understand the argument for ruling out non-cognate equivalents (especially if you don't understand what they mean).

Let me stress that I am not saying all this in order to argue that my option is better than yours in this particular case. Quite possibly your option is better than mine. I'm simply disagreeing with your argument in principle.

Sergio Kot Jan 8, 2014:

Agreed Charles: cognate is not per se equivalent. Except it is so, in this case. Additionally, the issue at hand is the word "distant", and not "act".

lorenab23 Jan 8, 2014:

typo distant...