Chapter 5
Tom, Dick and Harry as well as Fido and Puss in boots are
translators
The implications of biosemiotics for translation
studies
As a field, translation studies arose from the
practice of interlingual, mostly written translation. Though not an
invalid point of departure, this assumption, which had not really
been investigated critically despite lip service to Jakobson’s
categories of intralinguistic, interlinguistic and intersemiotic
translation, has meant that translation studies has limited its
field of interest to, mainly, written, literary, professional
translation as instantiated by Western practices. This linguistic
bias has an anthropocentric bias as its logical implication. The
limited conceptualization of translation has become untenable for a
number of reasons, not least of which is the growth in multimodal
communication made possible by information-technology developments
as well as the growth in posthumanist thinking. Lastly, semiotic
conceptualizations of translation clearly pose theoretical
challenges to a translation studies that is conceptualized on the
basis of interlinguistic translation only or that is based on a
linguicentric and thus anthropocentric bias.
This chapter investigates the Peircean definition
of meaning as “the translation of a sign into another system of
signs” (Peirce
1931–1966: 4.127), in particular the ways in which this kind
of thinking has evolved in the modern field of biosemiotics. If all
meaning creation is, per definition, translation, it means that
every living organism is a translator. It further means that one
needs to consider translational actions by animals and plants at
both intraspecific and interspecific levels. The chapter addresses
the asymmetry both in the relationships between human and non-human
animals and in the attention that translation studies pays to this
power dynamic.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation (NPIT)
- 3.Biosemiotics
- 3.1Theoretical biosemiotics
- 3.1.1Overview
- 3.1.2The evolution of semiosis
- 3.1.3The unity of life
- 3.1.4Questioning cultural and linguistic relativism
- 3.1.5Meaning is grounded
- 3.1.6The adjacent possible
- 3.2Applied biosemiotics
- 4.Implications
- 5.Conclusion
-
References
References
Affifi, Ramsey
2013 “
Learning
Plants: Semiosis Between the Parts and the
Whole.”
Biosemiotics 6 (3): 547–559.
Affifi, Ramsey
2014 “
Biological
Pedagogy as Concern for Semiotic
Growth.”
Biosemiotics 7 (1): 73–88.
Anderson, Myrdene
2012 “
Birthing
Prepositional
Logics.” In
Biosemiotic
Gatherings, ed.
by
Silver Rattasepp and
Tyler Bennett, 47–51. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
Antonini, Rachele, Chiara Bucaria, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato, and Ira Torresi
2011 Call
for papers. First International Conference on
Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation
1. Università di Bologna (Forlì).
[URL]
Antonini, Rachele, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato, and Ira Torresi
2017a “
Introducing
NPIT
studies.” In
Non-professional
Interpreting and Translation, ed.
by
Rachele Antonini,
Letizia Cirillo,
Linda Rossato, and
Ira Torresi, 1–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Antonini, Rachele, Letizia Cirillo, Linda Rossato, and Ira Torresi
Barbieri, Marcello
(ed) 2006 Introduction
to Biosemiotics. The New Biological
Synthesis. Dordrecht: Springer.
Barbieri, Marcello
2007 Biosemiotics:
Information, Codes and Signs in Living
Systems. New York: Nova Scientific Publishers.
Bielecka, Krystyna, and Mira Marcinow
2017 “
Mental
Misrepresentation in Non-human
Psychopathology.”
Biosemiotics 10 (2): 195–210.
.
[URL]
Biosemiotics
n.d. “
International
Society for Biosemiotic
Studies.”
[URL]
Brier, Søren
2010 “
Cybersemiotics:
An Evolutionary World View Going Beyond Entropy and
Information into the Question of
Meaning.”
Entropy 12 (8): 1902–1920.
Brier, Søren, and Cliff Joslyn
2013 “
What
Does it Take to Produce Interpretation? Informational,
Peircean and Code-Semiotic Views on
Biosemiotics.”
Biosemiotics 6 (1): 143–159.
Cerrone, Mirko
2018 “
Umwelt
and Ape Language Experiments: on the Role of Iconicity in
the Human-Ape Pidgin
Language.”
Biosemiotics 11 (1): 41–63.
Cobley, Paul
2010 “
The
Cultural Implications of
Biosemiotics.”
Biosemiotics 3 (2): 225–244.
Cobley, Paul
2016 Cultural
Implications of
Biosemiotics. Dordrecht: Springer.
Cobley, Paul, and Frederik Stjernfelt
2015 “
Scaffolding
Development and the Human
Condition.”
Biosemiotics 8 (2): 291–304.
Connolly, William E.
2013 “
Biology,
Politics,
Creativity.”
Perspectives on
Politics 11 (2): 508–511.
Cronin, Michael
2017 Eco-translation:
Translation and Ecology in the Age of the
Anthropocene. New York, NY: Routledge.
Deacon, Terrence W.
1997 The
Symbolic Species. The Co-Evolution of Language and the Human
Brain. New York: W. W. Norton.
Deacon, Terrence W.
2012 “
On
the Importance of Semiotics for
Biology.” In
Biosemiotic
Gatherings, ed.
by
Silver Rattasepp and
Tyler Bennett, 25–27. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
Deacon, Terrence W.
2013 Incomplete
Nature: How Mind Emerged from
Matter. New York: WW Norman.
Deely, John
2009 Purely
Objective Reality. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Eco, Umberto
1979 A
Theory of
Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Emmeche, Claus
2014 “
Semiotic
Scaffolding of the Social Self in Reflexivity and
Friendship.”
Biosemiotics 8 (2): 275–289.
Farina, Almo, and Nadia Pieretti
2013 “
From
Umwelt to Soundtope: An Epistemological Essay on Cognitive
Ecology.”
Biosemiotics 7 (1): 1–10.
Favareau, Donald
2007 “
The
Evolutionary History of
Biosemiotics.” In
Introduction
to Biosemiotics: The New Biological
Synthesis, ed.
by
Marcello Barbieri, 1–67. Dordrecht: Springer.
Favareau, Donald
2015 “
Symbols
are Grounded not in Things, but in Scaffolded Relations and
their Semiotic Constraints (Or How the Referential
Generality of Symbol Scaffolding Grows
Minds).”
Biosemiotics 8 (2): 235–255.
Favareau, Donald, Kalevi Kull, Gerald Ostdiek, Timo Maran, Louise Westling, Paul Cobley, Frederik Stjernfelt, Myrdene Anderson, Morten Tønnessen, and Wendy Wheeler
2017 “
How
Can the Study of the Humanities Inform the Study of
Biosemiotics?”
Biosemiotics 10 (1): 9–31.
Gilbert, Scott F.
2016 “
Ecological
Developmental Biology: Interpreting Developmental
Signs.”
Biosemiotics 9 (1): 51–60.
Giorgi, Franco
2017 “
The
Intuition of the Relevant
Next.” In
Biosemiotics
in the Community: Essays in Honour of Donald
Favareau, ed.
by
Kalevi Kull and
Paul Cobley, 11–14. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
Gómez-Moreno, José Manuel Ureña
2014 “
The
Role of Image Schemas and Superior Psychic Faculties in
Zoosemiosis.”
Biosemiotics 7 (3): 405–427.
Harris, Brian
1973 “
La traductologie, la traduction naturelle, la
traduction automatique et la
semantique [Translation studies, natural translation,
machine translation, and
semantics].” In
Problèmes
de sémantique, ed.
by
Judith McA’Nulty,
Paul Pupier, and
Antonio A. M. Querido, 133–146. Montreal: Presses de l’Université du Québec.
Henning, Brian G., and Adam C. Scarfe
(eds) 2013 Beyond
Mechanism: Putting Life Back Into
Biology. Lexington Books: Lanham.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper
2008 Biosemiotics:
An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of
Signs. London: University of Scranton Press.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper
2015 “
Introduction:
Semiotic
Scaffolding.”
Biosemiotics 8 (2): 153–158.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper
2018 “
Knowledge
Is Never Just
There.”
Biosemiotics 11 (1): 1–5.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper, and Frederik Stjernfelt
2015 “
The
Great Chain of Semiosis. Investigating the Steps in the
Evolution of Semiotic
Competence.”
Biosemiotics 9 (1): 7–29.
Jaroš, Filip
2016 “
Cats
and Human Societies: a World of Interspecific Interaction
and
Interpretation.”
Biosemiotics 9 (2): 287–306.
Juarrero, Alicia
1999 Dynamics
in Action: Intentional Behaviour as a Complex
System. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.
Kauffman, Stuart A.
1993 The
Origins of Order: Self-organization and Selection in
Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kauffman, Stuart A.
1995 At
Home in the Universe. The Search for the Laws of
Self-organisation and
Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kauffman, Stuart A.
2000 Investigations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kauffman, Stuart A.
2008 Reinventing
the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and
Religion. New York: Basic Books.
Kauffman, Stuart A.
2012 “
From
Physics to
Semiotics.” In
Biosemiotic
Gatherings, ed.
by
Silver Rattasepp and
Tyler Bennett, 30–46. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
Kauffman, Stuart A.
2013 “
Foreword:
Evolution beyond Newton, Darwin, and entailing
law.” In
Beyond
mechanism: Putting life back into
biology, ed.
by
Brian G. Henning and
Adam C. Scarfe, 1–24. Plymouth: Lexington.
Kull, Kalevi
2007 “
A
Brief History of
Biosemiotics.” In
Biosemiotics:
Information, codes and signs in Living
Systems, ed.
by
Marcello Barbieri, 1–26. New York: Nova Publishers.
Kull, Kalevi
2012 “
Advandements
in Biosemiotics: Where Are We Now in Discovering the Basic
Mechanisms of
Meaning-making.” In
Biosemiotic
Gatherings, ed.
by
Silver Rattasepp and
Tyler Bennett, 11–24. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
Kull, Kalevi
2015 “
Semiosis
Stems from Logical Incompatibility in Organic Nature: Why
Biophysics Does Not See Meaning, while Biosemiotics
Does.”
Progress in Biophysics
and Molecular
Biology 119 (3): 616–621.
.
[URL]
Kull, Kalevi
2016 “
Need
for Impressions: Zoosemiotics and Zoosemiotics, by Aleksei
Turovski.”
Sign Systems
Studies 44 (3): 456–462.
Kull, Kalevi
2017 “
What
is the
Possibility?” In
Biosemiotics
in the Community: Essays in Honour of Donald
Favareau, ed.
by
Kalevi Kull and
Paul Cobley, 15–25. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
Lesch, Harold M., Christine Anthonissen, Claire Penn, Kate Huddlestone, and Ilse Feinauer
2017 4th
International Conference on Non-Professional Translation and
Interpreting. Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (Stellenbosch).
[URL]
Mäekivi, Nelly
2018 “
Freedom
in Captivity: Managing Zoo Animals According to the ‘Five
Freedoms’.”
Biosemiotics 11 (1): 7–25.
Magnus, Riin
2015 “
The
Semiotic Challenges of Guide Dog Teams: the Experiences of
German, Estonian and Swedish Guide Dog
Users.”
Biosemiotics 9 (2): 267–285.
Marais, Kobus
2014 Translation
Theory and Development Studies: A Complexity Theory
Approach. London: Routledge.
Marais, Kobus
2019 A
(Bio)semiotic Theory of Translation: The Emergence of
Social-cultural Reality. New York: Routledge.
Marais, Kobus, and Carmen Delgado Luchner
2018 “
Motivating
the Translation-development Nexus: Exploring Cases from the
African Continent.”
The
Translator 25 (1): 380–394.
Marais, Kobus, and Kalevi Kull
Massey, Gary, Michaela Albl-Mikasa, Maureen Ehrensberger-Dow, Andrea Hunziker Heeb, Raquel Montero Muñoz, and Christa Stocker
2015 3rd
International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting
and Translation. Zurich University of Applied Sciences (Winterthur).
[URL]
Meyer, Bernd
2013 Call
for Papers. 2nd International Conference on Non-Professional
Interpreting and Translation
(NPIT2). Johannes Gutemberg Universität Mainz (Germersheim).
[URL]
Molefe, Monnapula, and Kobus Marais
2013 “
The
Role of Language Practice in Access to Public Service in
South Africa: The Case of
Philippolis.” In
Multilingualism
and Empowerment, ed.
by
Pol Cuvelier,
Theodorus Du Plessis,
Michael Meeuwis,
Reinhild Vandekerckhove, and
Vic Webb, 72–90. Pretoria: Van Schaik.
Peirce, Charles S.
1931–1966 Collected
Papers of Charles Sanders
Peirce. Edited
by
Charles Hartshorne,
Paul Weiss, and
Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge: Belknap.
Pérez-González, Luis, and Şebnem Susam-Saraeva
2012 “
Non-professionals
Translating and Interpreting. Participatory and Engaged
Perspectives.”
The
Translator 18 (2): 149–165.
Rafieian, Shahram
2011 “
A
Biosemiotic Approach to the Problem of Structure and
Agency.”
Biosemiotics 5 (1): 83–93.
Recchia-Luciani, Angelo N.
2012 “
Manipulating
Representations.”
Biosemiotics 5 (1): 95–120.
.
[URL]
Rodríguez, Sergio
2016 “
Recurrences
and Human Agential Meaning Grounding: Laying a Path in
Walking.”
Biosemiotics 9 (2): 169–184.
Sebeok, Thomas A.
1976 Contributions
to the Doctrine of
Signs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sebeok, Thomas A.
1986 I
Think I Am a Verb. New York: Plenum Press.
Sebeok, Thomas A.
2001a “
Biosemiotics:
Its Roots, Proliferation, and
Prospects.”
Semiotica 134: 61–78.
Sebeok, Thomas A.
2001b Global
Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sebeok, Thomas A.
2001c Signs:
An Introduction to Semiotics. 2
ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Stjernfelt, Frederik
2001 “
A
Natural Symphony? To What Extent is Uexku lls
Bedeutungslehre Actual for the Semiotics of our
Time?”
Semiotica 134: 79–102.
Sueur, Jérôme, and Almo Farina
2015 “
Ecoacoustics:
the Ecological Investigation and Interpretation of
Environmental
Sound.”
Biosemiotics 8 (3): 493–502.
Turner, J. Scott
2016 “
Semiotics
of a
Superorganism.”
Biosemiotics 9 (1): 85–102.
Tymoczko, Maria
2006 “
Reconceptualizing
Translation Theory. Integrating Non-Western Thought about
Translation.” In
Translating
Others, ed.
by
Theo Hermans, 13–32. Manchester: St. Jerome.
Von Uexküll, Jacob
1926 Theoretical
biology. London: Kegan Paul, Trensch, Trubner.
Vehkavaara, Tommi, and Alexei Sharov
2017 “
Constructive
Aspects of
Biosemiotics.”
Biosemiotics 10 (2): 145–156.
Wadensjö, Cecilia, Birgitta Englund Dimitrova, and Anna-Lena Nilsson
Wheeler, Wendy
2006 The
Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution
of
Culture. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Wheeler, Wendy
2014 “
A
Connoisseur of Magical Coincidences: Chance, Creativity and
Poiesis from a Biosemiotic
Perspective.”
Biosemiotics 7 (3): 389–404.
Wheeler, Wendy, and Louise Westling
2015 “
Biosemiotics
and Culture:
Introduction.”
Green
Letters 19 (3): 215–226.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Marais, Kobus
2022.
The stranger loops of translation.
STRIDON: Studies in Translation and Interpreting 2:2
► pp. 95 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.