ABSTRACT
When one thinks of the use of a concept in a given context, like the corpus of a discipline, one refers either to the linguistic sign (word or expression) which denotes this concept or to the conceptual content which is embedded in the sign, and perhaps even to the ideas the term evokes. If, moreover, the question is about importing the concept into a foreign language, it complicates matters further: we not only have to consider the occurrence of the original word in the new context, but also its translations as far as they are explicit. In our case, the French Film Studies form the context in which the concept ostranenie will be explored. Even though the context is narrow, the body of written texts on the subject of film is rather extensive. Remarkably, these writings do not refer to ostranenie as such, or so rarely that using this word seems to be superfluous, when we focus on the word itself, and infinite, when we consider the series of more or less close translations. To give an extensive analysis of this subject is far beyond the scope of this paper, and I shall therefore restrict myself to a few relevant observations.
