This article is inspired by Victor Segalen's Essay on Exoticism ([1908-1918], 1955) in which he decentres the current perspective as an incentive to the evolution of intercultural exchanges and means to get rid of the notion of colonial exoticism. He thus opens the way to the perception of the diverse. In translation, such a stance leads to reflections on the possible obliteration of intercultural distance. If colonial literature is founded on a European, or Western vision of the world, in translation ethnocentric approaches aim at absorbing the Foreign in a somehow commendable perspective--readability for a readership totally unaware of the culture of the Other. Consequently, how can anything that is out of reach, exterior, exo, be received without being warped? How can the translator resist normative cultural and linguistic demands in his/her language-culture? How can such a confrontation result in dialogue?
