Foreignness as a fetish

 It strikes me that the notion of foreignness is spurious and ideological.  Spanish and English are foreign to each other, but it is better to express that as reciprocal difference or set of differences, rather than Spanish as essentially foreign and English as our own. We talk about learning a second language, not a foreign one, because we want to avoid all those implications.  

Foreignizing translation can seem daring and edgy, domesticating translation, dull and ideologically suspect, but is this really true? All translations are oriented toward their audience and are hence domesticating.  

Some of the foreignizing strategies are mostly just distracting elements that don't really put the reader into contact with anything "foreign."