Cover not available
Article published In:
Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts
Vol. 8:3 (2022) ► pp.232–259

Translatability, modeling, otherness and the intersemiotic spaces of meaning

| Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro
What comes to the attention immediately in translation is the relationship between the initial text and the destination text. In interlingual translation these two texts belong to two different historical-natural languages, the transition is from the verbal to the verbal. But the interpretive trajectory transits through multiple sign systems, never exclusively verbal. Interlingual translation involves the verbal signs of historical-natural languages, but is also of the semiotic order. Signs call for interpretants. In terms of Ogden and Richard’s meaning triangle, to reach from the sign to what it means without passing through the apex representing the act of interpretation is not possible. Evoking authors who have contributed to understanding the semiotic nature of interpretive work and signifying processes, implied in the simplest act of translation, my task here is to evidence just how semiotically complex the work of translation is even in the case of interlingual translation.
Keywords: alterity, common-meaning, expressibility, interpretant/interpretation, metalinguistic-capacity, modeling/translatability, repeatability/uniqueness, sense/meaning/significance
Article outline
  • 1.Translation and intersemioticity
  • 2.Two texts and many signs, modeling and translation
  • 3.Translatability and expressibility
  • 4.“Common meaning” (Welby) and “common speech” (Rossi-Landi)
  • 5.Translation, dialogue and alterity
  • 6.Reported discourse as translation
  • 7.Translation faithful to the text’s alterity
  • 8.Translation between repeatability and singularity
  • 9.By way of concluding
  • References
Published online: 13 October 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ttmc.00093.pet
References (59)
References
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1929. Problemy tvorchestva Dostoevskogo [Problems of Dostoevsky’s Work]. Leningrad: Priboj, 1963 2, revised and enlarged.Google Scholar
. 1963. Problemy poetiki Dostoevskogo. Moscow: Sovetskij pistael’. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, translated by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984; 1929 1.Google Scholar
. 1986. Speech Genres & Other Late Essays, edited by Caryl Emerson, and Michael Holquist, translated by Vern McGee. Austin: Austin University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bréal, Michel. 1897. Essai de sémantique. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1966. Cartesian Linguistics. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
. 1975. Reflections on Language. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
. 1986. Knowledge of Language. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Cust, Mrs. Henry. ed. 1929. Echoes of Larger Life. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Deely, John. 1980. “The Nonverbal Inlay in Linguistic Communication.” In The Signifying Animal, ed. by Irmengaard Rauch, and Gerald Carr, 201–217. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
. 2008. Augustine and Poinsot. Scranton: University of Scranton Press.Google Scholar
Deely, John, Susan Petrilli, and Augusto Ponzio. 2005. The Semiotic Animal. Ottawa: Legas.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1990. I limiti dell’interpretazione. Milan: Bompiani.Google Scholar
. 1993. La ricerca della lingua perfetta. Rome: Laterza.Google Scholar
. 2001. Experiences in Translation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
. 2003. Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Milan: Bompiani.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1974. Lettere tra Freud e Jung. Turin: Boringhieri.Google Scholar
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1961[1943]. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. Translated by Francis Whitfield. Madison: University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1971[1959]. “On Linguistics Aspects of Translation.” In Selected Writings, vol. II1: 260–266. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Kourdis, Evangelos, and Susan Petrilli. eds. 2020. Translation and Translatability in Intersemiotic Space. Special issue of Punctum 6 (1). Thessaloniki: Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.Google Scholar
Kristeva, Julia. 1988. Etrangers à nous même. Paris: Fayard.Google Scholar
Leopardi, Giacomo. 1991[1898–1900]. Zibaldone dei miei pensieri [collects notes, reflections, aphorisms written between 1817–1832], 31 vols., edited by Giuseppe Pacella. Milan: Garzanti; English trans. Zibaldone, edited by Michael Caesar, and Franco D’Intino. London: Penguin, 2013.Google Scholar
Levinas, Emmanuel. 1948. “La réalité et son ombre.” Le Temps Modernes 4(38): 771–789.Google Scholar
Marais, Kobus. 2018. A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ogden, Charles K., and Ivor A. Richards. 1923. The Meaning of Meaning. With supplementary essays by Bronisław Malinowski and Francis Graham Crookshank. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; new edition, introduction by Umberto Eco. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.Google Scholar
Petrilli, Susan. ed. 1987. Per Ferruccio Rossi-Landi. Special Issue of Il Protagora. Rivista di filosofia e cultura fondata da Bruno Widmar, IV serie, 11/121, XXVII, genn.-dic.Google Scholar
. 1998. Teoria dei segni e del linguaggio. Bari: B.A. Graphis.Google Scholar
. 1999. La traduzione. Rome: Meltemi.Google Scholar
. 2007. “Interpretive Trajectories in Translation Semiotics.” Semiotica. Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies 163(1/4): 311–345. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2008. “Iconicity in Translation. Essays by Susan Petrilli, 7th SSA Sebeok Fellow.” The American Journal of Semiotics 24 (4): 237–302. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. Signifying and Understanding. Boston: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2010a. Sign Crossroads in Global Perspective. New Brunswick: Transaction.Google Scholar
. 2010b. “Translation, Iconicity, and Dialogism.” In Synergy, ed. by C. Jac Conardie, Roneél Johl, Marthinus Beukes, Olga Fischer, and Christina Ljungberg, 367–386. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2014. Sign Studies and Semioethics. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2015. “Translation of Semiotics into Translation Theory and Vice Versa.” Punctum 1 (2): 96–117. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016a. “Translation Everywhere.” In Traduire: signes, textes, pratiques / Translating: Signs, Texts, Practices. Signata. 7/2016, ed. by Jacques Fontanille, Marie Sonzogni, and Rovena Troqe, 23–56. Liège: Presses Universitaires de Liège. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016b. The Global World and Its Manifold Faces. Berne: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019a. Signs, Language and Listening. Ottawa: Legas.Google Scholar
. 2019b. Significare, interpretare e intendere. Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia.Google Scholar
Petrilli, Susan, and Augusto Ponzio. 2012. “Iconicity, Otherness and Translation.” Chinese Semiotic Studies 7 (1): 11–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Lineamenti di semiotica e di filosofia del linguaggio. Perugia: Guerra.Google Scholar
. 2019a. Dizionario, Enciclopedia, Traduzione. Paris: L’Harmattan.Google Scholar
. 2019b. Identità e alterità. Milan: Mimesis.Google Scholar
Petrilli, Susan. ed. 2003. Translation Translation. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Petrilli, Susan, and Augusto Ponzio. 2006. La raffigurazione letteraria. Milan: Mimesis.Google Scholar
Ponzio, Augusto. 1990. Man as a Sign. Edited, translated and introduced by Susan Petrilli. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1995. I segni dell’altro. Naples: ESI.Google Scholar
Rossi-Landi, Ferruccio. 1961. Significato, comunicazione e parlare comune. Padua: Marsilio.Google Scholar
. 1968. Il linguaggio come lavoro e come mercato. Milan: Bompiani. Language as Work and Trade, translated by Martha Adams. South Hadley: Bergin and Garvey, 1983.Google Scholar
. 1973. Ideologies of Linguistic Relativity. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
. 1978. Ideologia. Milan: ISEDI. New expanded edition. Milan: Mondadori. Marxism and Ideology, translated from the 1982 edition by Roger Griffin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.Google Scholar
. 1985. Metodica filosofica e scienza dei segni. Milan: Bompiani.Google Scholar
. 1992. Between Signs and Non-signs. Edited and introduced by Susan Petrilli. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sapir, Edward. 1949. Selected Writings. Edited by David Mandelbaum. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963 4.Google Scholar
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1916. Cours de linguistique générale. Edited by Charles Bally, and Albert Secheaye. Paris: Payot, 1922. Critical edition by Rudolph Engler. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 41 vols., 1968–1974.Google Scholar
Sebeok, Thomas A. 1991. A Sign Is Just a Sign. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
2001. Global Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Verdiglione, Armando. 1997. La psicanalisi, questa mia avventura. Milan: Spirali.Google Scholar
Welby, Victoria. 1983[1903]. What Is Meaning? Edited by Achim Eschbach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1959. Language, Thought and Reality. Edited by John Carroll. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Petrilli, Susan & Augusto Ponzio
2023. Translation in Semiosis of Life/Translation in Globalisation. Critical Arts ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. 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.