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This paper discusses the possibility to use translations to describe the dynamic relationship between synonyms. The translation process can be analysed into interlingual identification and differentiation, which provides us with a way to represent the degree of synonymy with respect to a target language, and to observe the multivocity of an utterance when transferred to another language by differing the point of view of the conceptualisation of the event. In a descriptive approach, the lexical item in a corpus should be seen as inseparable from its context so as to bridge the gap between textual equivalence and lexical correspondence. The distance between two words relative to the target language is understood in terms of attraction and repulsion of translation. By means of a parallel corpus with a comparable reference corpus, the attraction and the repulsion can be measured by the translational Z-score, introduced to highlight overused or misused translations, which are often neglected in statistical processing of bilingual lexicography. Finally, a brief demonstration on the alternation décider de + inf. / se décider à + inf. is presented to substantiate the preliminary methodological and theoretical considerations.