If Translation Studies were a country, it would be one that needs a new basis for its domestic policies and a broad rebalancing of its international relations. To carry on the image, the present contribution would be the manifesto of a new political movement whose stated aims were to amend the country's constitution and initiate some border disputes with neighbouring countries. The paper opens with a brief description of interpretive semiotics, which is the conceptual framework it applies. The central section is devoted to the proposal of a new, semiotics-based foundation for the intellectual investigation of translation. An application of the theoretical perspectives opened up by interpretive semiotics closes the paper. A case is made for updating a common trope for translation: from translating as transfer to translating as wave.