SEMIOTICS OF TRANSLATION

What Is Semiotics ?

          Semiotics is the study of how words and other signs systems of communication make meaning. 

The term originates from the Greek word for sign, semeion, which means anything that is used to represent or stand for something. 

For example, the word "chair" is the sign that English speakers use to describe a piece of furniture.

          Semiotics is useful in many fields. 

For example, an art critic might use semiotics to analyse how a painter uses symbols associated with femininity to convey something about womanhood. A psychologist might use semiotics to interpret patients' dreams and their past. Anthropologists use semiotics to study the significance of folktales (e.g. the story of Noah's ark) and rituals in specific cultures (e.g. swastika, moon and stars etc).

Saussure's Model of Semiotics

            Saussure's semiotics theory expands on what Peirce called symbolic signs and the arbitrary relationship that they have to what they represent. As a linguist, Saussure was especially interested in words, or linguistic signs. He explained that language does not just convey meaning, it makes meaning.

          Saussure explained the symbolic nature of signs by dividing them into two components : the signifier and the signified. The signifier is the form of the sign. In the case of language, it is the word that is spoken or written. So, "chair" is a signifier. Non-language signifiers are not spoken/written words. The signifier for chair can be a drawing or photograph of a chair.

• The signified is the concept/meaning suggesed by the word. The concept may not necessarily indicate the real, physical thing. It can be an abstract idea like patriotism or courage.

• A signifier may have more than one signified. For example, the word "chair" can also refer to the leader of a committee. It is impossible to tell what "chair" signifies without any context.

Semiotics of translation:

          The contact between the two disciplines dates back to the late 1950s, when the linguist and semiologist Roman Jakobson presented his idea of the three modes of translation: intralingual,

interlingual and intersemiotic. The first two types of translation were well known the history of translation studies has much to offer. But the introduction of the concept of intersemiotic translation - caused both surprise and skepticism to those involved in translation studies.

          Jakobson's seminal paper was published in an era in which translation studies was not a fully recognized field in the humanities.

Translation studies focused on the linguistic dimension of the translation process only. Translation studies was not seen as an autonomous discipline and was considered part of the linguistic approach to communication. Jakobson's work was the result of the interaction of three humanistic disciplines: linguistics, semiotics, and translation.

          Structural linguistics tried to change the belief that Ferdinand de Saussure's parole or Roman Jakobson's message were not subjects worthy of scientific study. The main assumption of structuralism and semiotics was that for every process (an utterance, for instance) there is a system of underlying rules that govern it.

          And if parole is not worth studying, is the image worth studying? Can the image have rules? Roland Barthes' (1964) first semiological studies of advertising, influenced decisively the way the scientific community approached the image.

Barthes did not connect the image with translation, he contributed in establishing it as an object of study, next to that of linguistics, by uncovering the structural

composition of the visual message. That led the way to the study of the transformation of semiotic systems. The boundaries of the translation process, therefore, were expanded quite early by the semioticians, something which was not acknowledged by translation scholars.

          Umberto Eco observes that: culture continuously translates signs into signs, words into icons and so on. Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio also argue that: the translator must move beyond the conventions and obligations of the dictionary to enter the live dialogue between verbal signs and nonverbal signs.

          Many distinguished semioticians point to the transition of a text from one culture to the other. It is almost a cultural translation. Othello (an English play) transmuted in to Onkara (a Hindi film) is an example. In an era of multisemiotic and multimodal communication, meaning is continuously transformed among different semiotic systems. So the instrument of semiotic research is translation.

          Gradually, however, the scepticism of translation scholars abated and there were calls for drawing on semiotics to enrich translation theory. As early as the 1980s, translation scholars started to turn to semiotics. Thus, for Bassnett the first step towards an examination of the processes of translation must be to accept that although translation has a central core of linguistic activity, it belongs most properly to semiotics Mona Baker also considers that translation by illustration (intersemiotic translation) is a useful option if the word which lacks an equivalent in the target language refers to a physical entity which can be illustrated.

          Jeremy Munday argues that translation studies must move beyond the written word and that the visual, and multimodal in general, must be incorporated into a fuller study of the translation of advertising'

         The expansion of the translation process to include non-verbal texts caused debate about the nature of translation, although there seems to be an agreement that contemporary communication is based on multimodal texts. There is an ' incessant process of "translation", or "transcoding" - between a range of semiotic modes.