Towards the semiotics of translation
PEETER TOROP
Translation studies and semiotics
Historically, the semiotics of translation is a part of both translation
studies and semiotics. In the history of translation semiotics important
positions have been taken by specific connections between semiotics
(especially cultural semiotics) and translation studies, which have created
premises to connect the application of semiotics in translation studies and
prerequisites of interpreting translation activity in semiotics into a more
homogeneous disciplinary whole. It is still too early to talk about an
extensive interdisciplinary synthesis, but one can already notice a
movement described by J. Lambert as paradoxical:
[T]he prestige of Translation Studies is not at stake within Translation Studies
itself; research on translation will really be taken seriously only once other
disciplines in the Humanities accept that they need to study translation
phenomena for a better understanding of their own object of study. Culture
has not to be studied as part of the translation phenomenon, since the entire
phenomenon is culture-bound: translation has rather to be investigated as part of
culture. (Lambert 1992: 25)
The matter is principally about a multidisciplinary association preceding
interdisciplinariness, and it is rather manifest in mutual descriptions and
rapprochement of metalanguages than in common methodology. Viewing
problems of translation at the crossing point of different disciplines in
contemporary science reflects the shift of scholars' interest from relations
between two languages and the text to questions concerning the
social and cultural functioning of translation activity. In such a multidisciplinary movement, translation semiotics designates a general change
in attitudes to problems of translation rather than a new discipline.
Nevertheless, in translation studies disciplinary homogeneity has been
dreamed of and it is perhaps most vividly mirrored in J. S. Hohnes'
investigations. Already in 1978 he wrote about the necessity to
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598 P. Torop
differentiate between four complementary theories of translation in
translation studies. Above all a theory of the translation process is needed
to render sense to what happens when a person decides to translate
something. Secondly, a theory of the translation product is required to
fix the specific nature of translation as a separate type of texts. Thirdly,
a theory of translational function is requested to understand the behavior of translation in a recipient culture. These three theories cannot be
normative, since they try to describe the situations emerged but do not
make prescriptions. Normativity, however, has its importance, fourthly,
in the theory of translation didactics (Holmes 1988: 95).
Holmes has basically formulated a program of interdisciplinary
translation studies, which has been developed by different translation
theories to different extents. However, Holmes did not create illusions
for himself, calling balanced translation studies a disciplinary Utopia
(Holmes 1988: 109).
In contemporary translation studies, semiotics is approached by certain
tendencies that are characterized by connecting translation activity with
cultural studies or placing the whole of translation studies, as a discipline of intercultural studies, into the context of the analysis of cultural
contacts. Such a perspective has also set its seal upon the distinction of
developmental stages in recent translation studies. Firstly, the influence
of polysystems theory has brought forward that different discourses of
translation are distinguished, and a position for translation is looked
for in the hierarchy of discourses of a recipient culture. Secondly, the
dependence of the translator and the text on a concrete situation and
a way of manipulating with the text are asserted. The third stage is
characterized by poststructuralist pluralism both in respect to making
sense of the original and regarding the search for the method of
translation (Bassnett 1993: 145-148).
It is characteristic that scholars running comparative analysis try to
tie concrete linguistic and literary cases to a cultural background. They
tend to look upon philology as a discipline analyzing culture via language
and literature (cf. Frank 1995: 211: Ί think [of] philology as the discipline which studies a culture in and through its language and literature,
or languages and literatures').
Against the current background, the position of a translation scientist
allows two possibilities of self-description to be detected: (1) the pluralistic
viewpoint that seeks for the causes of metalingual and theoretical diversity in the rise of new conceptions; (2) the historical viewpoint that projects new conceptions upon the history of traditional translation studies
and looks for possibilities of their synthesis. The second position presupposes methodological readiness for juxtaposing the old and the new,
Towards the semiotics of translation 599
whereas the first one leads to the understanding that the development
of translation studies lacks conceptual coherence (on the conceptual
incoherence of translation studies: Delabastita 1991: 138; Snell-Hornby
1988).
Boundaries of translation
A discipline springing from the contact of translation studies and semiotics can bring itself into consciousness through demarcating its object
of research. The object of translation studies is formed by the process
of translation, while semiotics has focused on signs and sign systems —
making the system and the process congruent has always been difficult.
It may be possible that making them congruent would be easier, if we
would begin from the result of the translation process — the translational
text — and try to find different possibilities for its demarcation. By this
we would achieve at least complementarity of the aspect of translation
studies and the aspect of semiotics. In translation studies the question
about the limits of translation depends largely on the treatment of the
problem of translatability. Both differentiating between parameters of
translation and discussions about the indeterminacy of translation and
the concept of radical translation belong here (see Torop 1995: 57-82;
Torop 1997; Stanosz 1990).
The starting question to define translation is the question about the border
between translation and non-translation. As a possible answer to this question: translation is everything called translation, the notion of the boundary
and bordering has to be specified. The result will be differentiating
between two more boundaries. The first one is the boundary between a
translation and the original, and the second one is the boundary between a
translation and the recipient culture. The boundary between a translation
and the original has been such a traditional research object in translation
studies. The treatment of which depends upon discrimination between
types of translation as realizations of the process of translation or different translational behaviors. The boundary between a translation and the
recipient culture has actualized in translation studies in connection with
reflecting upon the purpose of translation (cf. Reiss and Vermeer 1991:
96: 'Die Dominante aller Translation ist deren Zweck'). It is characteristic
that balanced conceptions emanating from the inner disciplinary homogeneity try to make these boundaries come closer. For example, the
teleological aspect may be of importance in the methodology of the
analysis of the original in translation studies. According to the teleological aspect the outcome of the translation process is a functional text.
600 P. Torop
The comparison of it with the original is executed only in harmony
with the goal of translation: 'translation is the production of a functional target text maintaining a relationship with a given source text that
is specified according to the translation skopos' (Nord 1991: 232). Thus
the boundaries indicated turn out to be largely intratextual, and the
nature of translational text as a source concerns both the original
and its possible reception in a new cultural environment. This means
that translation may postulate its boundaries and specific translational
behavior itself:
What the target-oriented approach in translation is geared to, in fact, is the
retrospective study of the production of translated texts, not their reception and
consumption. To be more precise: it purports to contextualize translation and
present it as [a] conditioned type of behavior in culture. (Toury 1993: 17-18)
Boundaries of a translation text may be framing in the case when by
translation we do not understand merely a text, but a published text. The
existence of translation as a book or part of a journal issue materializes
the extra features of boundaries by the help of involved metatexts. They
may be prefaces by the translator, articles on the author of the original or
on the work, or instructions for reception in the form of glossaries, or
presumptive or interpretive commentaries. Boundaries are most explicated in the book, which in a natural manner makes a maximum amount
of specifying extra characteristics possible. It has to be stressed that
framing boundaries are primarily extrinsic to the text.
However, boundaries of translation may also be intratextual and
marked by boundary signs, i.e., translational boundaries of the nature
of sign are also possible. Application of semiotics in translation studies
has entailed the bringing of the semiotics of boundaries into consciousness on the level of individual elements (signs) of a text. This can manifest
itself in the differentiation of semiotic relevance in the components of text
(Wilss 1980: 16-17). This can also be revealed in the search for concrete
boundary signs:
The study of translational paratexts is the study of signs that not only signal
translational status but also represent the distance of a non-translational text,
retrospectively called the source or original. (Pym 1992: 185; see also Nord 1995)
In the extreme, this may turn into viewing translation as a sign-situation:
In translation the relation between the source language text (A) and its receptor
translation text (B) stands as the semiotic relation of sign (S) to object (O), or of
signifier to signified. In brief, source to translation is as sign to object. (Barnstone
1994: 91)
Towards the semiotics of translation 601
In any case we can maintain that a translation text shapes its ontology
through its relations with the original and the recipient culture. This
traditional understanding coincides with the logic of a deconstructive
approach to a translation text:
[T]he target text belongs neither to its source nor to its target linguistic systems.
It exists in a realm that is in-between the two possibilities; it is incorporation
only (in + corpore: 'in the body') — not rebirth. (Dass 1993: 2)
Leaving translation studies and taking up the position of cultural
semiotics, the problem of translation boundaries gains new aspects.
Interpretation of translation boundaries as interpretation of the ontology of the translation text in the framework of translation studies is
supplemented by the term cultural text. For example, if boundaries of a
translation book frame the translation and stress its intrinsic homogeneity, then boundaries of translation detectable from the position
of cultural semiotics overlap only partially with those discriminated
in the framework of translation studies. Translation into a language,
book (text) and culture are different sides of translation activity.
Cultural sourceness of any text can be viewed from at least two
angles. A fictional text, for example, belongs to the tradition of native or
regional culture, being thereby a diachronic text of literary history. At the
same time it creates various specific relations with its epoch and cultural
space, being thus a synchronic text of culture. Between the literary and the
cultural there rule intertextual connections (cf. White 1989: 301, 294).
Culture enters a text in a way comparable to a concrete translation
text. If the determination of the aesthetic distance in relation to the
text occurs through the literary aspect, the cultural aspect is important from the standpoint of the identification of a text (Assmann 1995:
241-242). The cultural aspect of the identification of a text may be
inspected from two perspectives. On the one hand, all texts circulating and inevitably intertwining in culture form the cultural repertoire
to which every new text adds dynamic (cf. Even-Zohar 1997: 355-363).
Dropping into a new association of texts in which a certain habit
(habitus) of reading/consuming texts is operating brings along a change
in the reception of the text's elements. They turn into elements of
repertoire:
In translation, textemes tend to be converted into repertoremes, where a
TEXTEME is any sign, irrespective of its rank and scope, which is subordinated
to textual relations and hence carries textual functions, and a REPERTOREME
— any sign (again, regardless of rank and scope) which forms part of an
institutionalized repertoire. (Toury 1991: 187)
602 P. Torop
The inevitability of the turn of new texts into repertoire is reflected in
the shift of the term adequacy, which has become old-fashioned in
translation studies and moved to periphery, and in its replacement with
the new conceptions of 'applicability' and 'acceptability'. These new
notions are already considered as key concepts of translation studies (see
Doherty 1997: 2). The given process brings along a blurring of boundaries
between own and alien, between original and translation, whereas the
feature of translatedness becomes a feature of several texts. Such a
situation has forced G. Toury to make use of the term 'assumed translation' to specify boundaries between translation and non-translation
(Toury 1995: 31-35). When culture loses its boundaries, then it is the
duty of the translator to protect them. Assuring the quality of translation does not confine the responsibility coming from the mission of the
translator. It also presupposes proficiency in the preservation of the
autonomy of texts (cf. Lane-Mercier 1997).
On the other hand, identification of a text is possible as a projection
to an imaginable example, a concrete manifestation of cultural text. For
example, Russian literature's 'Petersburg Text' is a code-text invariant for
many literary texts written during different epochs. This invariant hypertext expresses both its connection with the city (the extensive aspect),
just as well as with the connection of every single text belonging to the
Petersburg Text with the whole body of texts forming the Petersburg
Text (the intensive aspect; see Toporov 1995: 275, 280). The Petersburg
Text becomes 'a mechanism by which the translation a realibus ad
realtora, the change of material reality into mental values becomes true'
(Toporov 1995: 259), which in its turn allows that the text 'teaches the
reader rules for leaving its boundaries' (Toporov 1995: 259).
Projection of a concrete text on a cultural text with the aim of identifying the text reminds us of certain searches in translation studies in
which the limits of the invariability of meaning was treated 'not as an
absolute category, but as invariability created in relation to mediative
languages' (Revzin and Rozenzweig 1964: 68). The existence of conditional languages or texts on the part of mediators leads us to a question
on semiosis, more exactly to a comprehension of semiosis, from the
standpoint of bringing the boundaries of translation into consciousness.
From semiosis of translation to semiotics of translation
Treating the problem of semiosis from the position of translational
problems is a prerequisite to the formation of translation semiotics as
an independent discipline. A trend proceeding from the semiotics of
Towards the semiotics of translation 603
C. S. Peirce has taken into use the term semiotranslation, which designates
translational semiosis. According to this, translational activity progresses
under the conditions of contractual semiosis (Gorlee 1993: 212).
According to this trend, the process of translation principally has a
complementary nature: 'In translation real exchange "degenerates" into
complementarity' (Gorlee 1993: 213). The result is making sense of a
translation text in the framework of a definite contractual semiosis, and
this entails also the dynamism of description:
Nothing is fixed in sign translation: the translating text-sign, the translated
text-sign, the (non)linguistic codes, the translator, the translational and generalcultural norms, all are subject to continual interaction and change, even to a
minute degree. (Gorlee 1993: 223)
In cultural semiotics attempts have been made to distinguish between
semioses of different levels. On the one hand, semiosis of culture and
semiosis in culture have been compared and these, in turn, are analyzed
in the framework of cultural semiotics and the ethnology of semiosis
correlating with cultural facts of semiosis. In respect to this logic,
linguistics also becomes a part of the ethnology of semiosis (cf. Kelkar
1984: 132-133). At the same time, a linguist can describe the construction
of cultural meaning through comparison of different semiotic systems:
'Any construct of cultural meanings — that is, any social context — is
realized in the form of acts of meaning in the various semiotic modes of
which language is one' (Halliday 1984: 9).
The social parameter of the description of semiosis and semioses
already comes from M. Bakhtin's conception:
Life tries to hide into itself, to go to its inner infinity, it fears boundaries, tries to
demolish them, since it does not believe in the relevance and goodness of the power
coming from the outside; unacceptability of external point of view. Therewith the
culture of boundaries becomes impossible — the inevitable premise of firm and
deep style; it is exactly life with boundaries there is nothing to do with, all creative
energies leave borders, letting them with fate. Aesthetic culture is the culture of
boundaries and therefore it presupposes the warm atmosphere of deep trust
surrounding life. Firm and grounded creation and processing of external and
internal boundaries, boundaries of the man and his world presupposes a strong
and secured position outside it. (Bakhtin 1994: 251; my translation)
In the relation of the outer and the inner mentioned by Bakhtin, a
universal semiotic dualism is situated: 'There are two ways for man to
adjust to the world: trending from the inside — as his scope of view, and
departing from the outside — as his surroundings' (Bakhtin 1994: 165; my
translation). The same scope of view and surroundings can be talked
604 P. Torop
about also in relation with the translation text. On the border of the
scope of view and the surroundings there meet several conceptions of
translational activity that therefore have been described by Bakhtin ante
factum.
C. S. Peirce's notion of unlimited semiosis fits into the same context:
The process of unlimited semiosis postulated by Peirce suggests that our linguistic
competence is best explained within the format of an encyclopedia rather than
dictionary. (Eco and Nergaard 1998: 219)
It is obvious that the dictionary also reflects elements of the encyclopedia,
just as well as it is evident that the encyclopedia does not cover all features of the dictionary. In culture, conventionalization of reading texts
takes place and in a sense every new text turns out to be a text already
read before its appearance. In this sense every reading or reception of
any artifact occurs in an intertextual space. There are reasons to talk
also about intertextual semiosis:
Intertextual semiosis constitutes itself in the interaction between text and reader,
depending on (given or assumed) 'intertextual disposition' of texts and on aspects
of intertextually oriented text processing. (Holthuis 1994: 77)
Intertextual knowledge is a part of linguistic and encyclopedic knowledge (cf. Holthuis 1994: 84) and their relations depend on the aim of
interpretation. Umberto Eco has written about difficulties of achieving the
optimal reception:
Thus every act of reading is a difficult transaction between the competence of
the reader (the reader's world knowledge) and the kind of competence that a given
text postulates in order to be read in an economic way. (Eco 1992: 68)
Cultural space is always intertextual and differentiation between
primary, secondary and other texts proves to be difficult. Some texts are
consumed through others, pure texts practically do not exist — every text
is surrounded by a contact zone with other texts, and this makes it difficult
to detect the boundaries of the text. The problem does not only lie in
difficulties concerning the making sense of the generation of texts, but also
in the variability of textual features. At times texts lose old characteristics,
at times they acquire new ones — cf. Toporov:
Culture therefore invariably invites comparison and juxtaposition; it is not only
the place where meanings are born, but the space in which they are being
exchanged, 'transmitted' and seek to be translated from one cultural language into
another. (1992: 30)
Towards the semiotics of translation 605
From the viewpoint of translational activity and its theoretical interpretation it is important to demarcate the ontology and interpretation of
texts. The reader is free in his reading. Although the translator is also a
reader, he does not have that freedom due to the need to determine the
rate of translatability (his attitude to language, discourse, text, and
intertextual space) according to the goal of translation and to work out
the strategy of translation. Making boundaries explicit eases both the
work of the translator and the reader's reception.
The semiospheric boundary: In J. M. Lotman's conception of the semiosphere the notion of translation exists in the broad sense of the word. The
starting point is understanding that the existence and development of
cultural languages is possible only via mutual contacts:
So any one language turns out to be immersed in a semiotic space and it can
only function by interaction with that space. The unit of semiosis, the smallest
functioning mechanism, is not the separate language but the whole semiotic space
of the culture in question. This is the space we term the semiosphere. (Lotman
1990: 124-125)
In accordance with the given logic, the connection between semiosphere
and semiosis is similar to the relation between the terms cultural semiosis
and semiosis in culture. Analogously one can talk about the boundary of
the semiosphere and boundaries within the semiosphere:
As all levels of the semiosphere — from the personality of a man or a separate text
to global semiotic associations — are like semiospheres inserted into each other,
each of them has simultaneously become into a participant in dialogue (into a part
of semiosphere), and into the space of dialogue (into the whole of semiosphere).
(Lotman 1992: 24)
The boundary has an extremely important role in the semiosphere,
because as a bilingual mechanism it translates external messages into the
internal language of the semiosphere, discriminates one's own from the
alien, it turns external non-messages into messages (cf. Lotman 1992: 14).
In its' contents, the bringing of the boundary into consciousness enables
us to comprehend the peculiarity of semiotization and possibilities to
'translate texts of alien semiotics into the language of "our" semiotics'
(Lotman 1996: 183).
The semiospheric boundary as a system of intertwined boundaries is
describable with the help of the notion of intersemiosis. In contemporary
culture individual signs rather than sign systems become autonomous,
but both for the recognition of signs and the comprehension of them the
possibility of projecting them on different systems is important. Departing
606 P. Torop
from translational activity it means differentiating between languages,
texts and cultural codes, and working out means for mediating them (see,
for example, Delabastita 1993: 33-39). Methodologically transition from
the level of signs to the level of sign systems is important, even in the
case part of the corpus of signs of different sign systems overlaps. The
semiospheric boundary is therefore a translational mechanism whereat
the translation of concrete signs turns the text into a system of conditional
semioses or, in other words, into the system of intersemiosis.
The topological boundary is not only a simple translational mechanism
but also assures the preservation of the invariant features of the text.
Filming, staging, illustrations of fiction that all are connected with
intersemiotic translation or, in other words, with the change of sign
system or simultaneous mediation in several different sign systems in the
course of the process of transmutation, belong here, on the one hand.
Any translation is transformation of the text, and from the standpoint
of cultural communication it is interesting to inspect the migration of
different transmutations of one text in culture as the presentation of different sides of that text. On the other hand, in intertextual space whole
reconstructions are also possible. V. Toporov, for example, is of the opinion that the main task of intertextual analysis is creating a typology of
those signs through which different types of similarity and the 'similarity'
function are realized in texts (cf. Toporov 1993: 20).
The framing boundary marks the wholeness of the text by bringing forth
the dominant. Such framing is conditional and comes from the wish to
determine the sourceness and wholeness of the text through one or several
parameters (national, subcultural, political, geographic, and other signs).
Textual signs have to be mentioned separately. These may be signs of the
beginning (title, epigraph, dedication) or the end (contents, registers, bibliography); these may also be metatexts framing the text (introduction,
afterword, commentaries, glossaries, etc.) in a book or a journal.
The linear boundary is a distinguishing boundary and it actualizes those
oppositions by which differentiation of linguistic, mental, social, ideological and other worlds is executed in the text. Activity of translation as
a much more rational one than the creation of the original, cannot do
without reconstruction or explication of the boundaries of the text, and
the possible world of translation depends on the result of this activity.
The boundaries of translation inside cultural boundaries make it possible
to see the concentric hierarchy of boundaries in the text upon which, in
turn, depends the interpretation of both individual signs and sign systems.
The way of understanding the system of translational boundaries is
the basis for defining different aspects of translation semiotics. Without
examining these possibilities closely in the current context, let us point
Towards the semiotics of translation 607
out the main aspects of translation semiotics: (1) semiotics of translation
as translation of semiotics (proceeding from the semiotic features of language, texts and culture); (2) complementary translation semiotics that
analyzes textual associations originated in the cause of metacommunication and total translation (textual, metatextual, intextual, intertextual
and extratextual translations); (3) social translation semiotics, the object
of interest of which is formed by problems of postcolonial translation and semiotranslation, just as well as postmodern approaches to
translation (social and discursive practice, habitus, literacy, etc.); (4) processual translation semiotics as semiotic description of the different
actualizations of translation process and creation of a model of the
translation process for the uniform description of types of translation;
(5) radical translation semiotics as usage of semiotic means for the
analysis of intersemiotic translation.
Translation semiotics is in tight connection with cultural semiotics.
However, at the same time in the situation of intersemiosis and intertextuality it is not enough to take into account just the semiotic heterogeneity of texts. The mixing of texts and sign systems as intertwining of
boundaries faces us with sharp social problems that arise from the way
of man's adaptation to society; man's subordination to inculturation;
acculturation and multiculturalism in educational systems and means
of mass communication; just as well as from man's dependence on intermediality (changes in the relation between the verbal, the visual and the
auditory). Therefore, the semiotics of translation has an inevitable
connection with sociosemiotics.
The rise of translation semiotics is caused by general changes in social
textual communication and the formation of new objects of analysis.
Moreover, traditional translation studies also need innovative propulsion
and the problematic of translation semiotics has already found its firm
position. Thus the disciplinary self-determination of the semiotics of
translation is only the question of time.
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Peeter Torop (b. 1950) is Professor and Head of the Department of Semiotics at the University
of Tartu in Estonia < torop@ut.ee > or <semiotics@ut.ee>. His research interests include
the history of Russian literature and culture, semiotics of culture, and translation studies.
His major publications include Tartu school as school' (1994), Total Translation
(1995), Dostoevsky: History and Ideology (1997), and The position of translation in
translation' (1997).