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Part of
The Complexity of Social-Cultural Emergence: Biosemiotics, semiotics and translation studies
Edited by Kobus Marais, Reine Meylaerts and Maud Gonne
[Benjamins Translation Library 164] 2024
► pp. 84–108

Chapter 4
Animal photojournalism as knowledge translation

An ecosemiotic approach to visual activism

| University of the Free State

This chapter explores the ways in which photojournalism (specifically animal activist photography of domesticated animals) functions as translation and, in particular, knowledge translation. Referring broadly to the synthesis, exchange, and application of knowledge produced during research processes, knowledge translation actively bridges the chasm between the acquisition of knowledge and application of knowledge. By providing visual information that verbal communication would otherwise not be able to convey, animal activist photography is not only a translational process of the knowledge of the activist/photographer behind the lens, but also the plight of the animal in front of the lens. Furthermore, by approaching this study within ecosemiotics, a branch of semiotics that explores the human relationships to nature this chapter engages with the human/non-human relations that are represented by animal activist photojournalism.

Keywords: intersemiotic translation, knowledge translation, activism, photography, photojournalism, translation
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • An argument for a semiotic enlarging of translation studies
  • Why ecosemiotics?
  • The human/non-human relationship
  • Translation and activism
  • Photojournalism and activism
  • Knowledge translation
  • Non-human and human agency in knowledge translation
  • The photographs
  • Agency in photography: Animal gaze and restriction of movement
  • Activist intersemiotic translation as knowledge translation
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 May 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.164.04van
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