ABSTRACT
This chapter provides context, outlining certain key questions at the intersection of Translation Studies and Affect Studies. It argues that translation challenges can in fact help to scrutinise the mood of a literary text, with the awkwardness in Marcel Proust’s Recherche used as a case study. Proust’s reminder that translation starts with a careful consideration of a single word raises the point that there are many categories of vocabulary which pose particular challenges to the literary translator, and it is the affective lexicon which shall be singled out. When Proust’s neighbours undertook refurbishments in their apartments, he beseeched his friends to arrange for the work to be postponed, or at least undertaken at hours more amenable to his nocturnal habits. Awkwardness not only underlies and unites thematic concerns in the Recherche, fostering tonal modulations between the humorous and the tragic, but also helps to understand the structure of the novel.
