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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. 157–172

Chapter 7
Translation and biosemiotics

The Soviet context

| Kent State University

The emergence of biosemiotics in Soviet translatology and related fields has a unique history, which is related to the adoption and adaptation of Saussurean linguistics to various fields, beginning with literature. This chapter traces this trajectory in two distinct periods. The first period covers the initial adoption of formalist concepts by translation scholars, such as Dmitrii Usov and Andrei Fodorov, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The second period relates to the rediscovery of Russian formalism in the post-World War II period, and its role in the evolution of the concept of translation among the scholars of the Moscow-Tartu Semiotic School, focusing on the writings of Juri Lotman.

Keywords: biosemiotics, Russian formalism, Soviet translation studies, Moscow-Tartu Semiotic School, Andrei Fedorov, Juri Lotman
Article outline
  • Translation and/as science
  • The Russian formalists: From mechanistic to organicist models
  • Organic metaphors in Soviet translation studies
  • Biosemiotics in the Moscow-Tartu school
  • Conclusion: The future of translation and biosemiotics
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 May 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.164.07bae
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