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Target
Vol. 1:1 (1989) ► pp.69–94

Wittgenstein, Translation, and Semiotics

| University of Bergen, Norwa and Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Wittgenstein discusses interlingual and intersemiotic translation, both in its own right and, more often, as an object of comparison. In his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), he puts forth a pictorial view which can be construed in Saussurian terms. This rule-governed notion of translation is, in Wittgenstein's later work, dynamized and based upon the use of signs. Translation is one of the language-games in Philosophical Investigations (1953). Wittgenstein's language-game of translation approaches Peirce's semiosis. Language-games are thirds which, in their nonverbal aspects, also partake of secondness and firstness. The language-game of translation occurs, at least theoretically, in three stages corresponding to the three logical interpretants.

Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Picture Theory and Translation
  • From Icon to Semiosis
  • Language-games
  • Culture
  • Ground
  • Firsts, Seconds, Thirds
  • The Language-game of Translation
  • Translation as Semiosis
  • Translation: Wittgenstein and Peirce
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 1 January 1989
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.1.1.06gor
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