Exploring Intersemiotic Translation Models

This volume sets out a new paradigm in intersemiotic translation research, drawing on the films of Ang Lee to problematize the notion of films as the simple binary of transmission between the verbal and non-verbal. The book surveys existing research as a jumping-off point from which to consider the role of audiovisual dimensions, going beyond the focus on the verbal as understood in Jakobsonian intersemiotic translation. The volume outlines a methodology comprising a system of various models which draw on both translation studies and film studies frameworks, with each model illustrated with examples from Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Lust, Caution; and Life of Pi. In situating the discussion within the work of a director whose own work straddles East and West and remediates between cultures and semiotic systems, Zhang argues for an understanding of intersemiotic translation in which films are not simply determined by verbal source material but through the process of intersemiotic translators mediating non-verbal, quality-determining materials into the final film. The volume looks ahead to implications for translation and film research more broadly as well as other audiovisual media. This book will appeal to scholars interested in translation studies, film studies, media studies and cultural studies in general.

This book analyses intersemiotic translation, where the translator works across sign systems and cultural boundaries. Challenging Roman Jakobson’s seminal definitions, it examines how a poem may be expressed as dance, a short story as an olfactory experience, or a film as a painting. This emergent process opens up a myriad of synaesthetic possibilities for both translator and target audience to experience form and sense beyond the limitations of words. The editors draw together theoretical and creative contributions from translators, artists, performers, academics and curators who have explored intersemiotic translation in their practice. The contributions offer a practitioner’s perspective on this rapidly evolving, interdisciplinary field which spans semiotics, cognitive poetics, psychoanalysis and transformative learning theory. The book underlines the intermedial and multimodal nature of perception and expression, where semiotic boundaries are considered fluid and heuristic rather than ontological. It will be of particular interest to practitioners, scholars and students of modern foreign languages, linguistics, literary and cultural studies, interdisciplinary humanities, visual arts, theatre and the performing arts.

This book explores the practical aspects of intersemiotic translation, examining how different signs and sign sets can be transposed into different kinds of semiotic forms of reference. Drawing on theories from translation studies, semiotics, philosophy and stylistics, the author seeks to understand what happens when texts are translated from one genre or modality to another, and makes use of examples ranging from written texts to advertising, images, music, painting, photography, and sculpture. She also analyses related topics such as the differences between Romance and Germanic languages, the difficulties that arise when attempts are made to translate figures of speech or elements of authorial style, and how this interdisciplinary field relates to traditional language-based translation. This book will be of interest to students, teachers, translators and researchers working in the fields of translation studies and multimodality in particular.

Exploring the Implications of Complexity Thinking for Translation Studies considers the new link between translation studies and complexity thinking. Edited by leading scholars in this emerging field, the collection builds on and expands work done in complexity thinking in translation studies over the past decade. In this volume, the contributors address a variety of implications that this new approach holds for key concepts in Translation Studies such as source vs. target texts, translational units, authorship, translatorship, for research topics including translation data, machine translation, communities of practice, and for research methods such as constraints and the emergence of trajectories. The various chapters provide valuable information as to how research methods informed by complexity thinking can be applied in translation studies. Presenting theoretical and methodological contributions as well as case studies, this volume is of interest to advanced students, academics, and researchers in translation and interpreting studies, literary studies, and related areas.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Sociology is the first encyclopaedic presentation of the research into social aspects of translation and interpreting. It consists of thirty-five chapters contributed by forty experts in their respective fields of the sociology of translation. The Handbook traces the evolution of research into social aspects of translation and interpreting, explains the basics of the sociology of translation, offers an insight into studies of translation within sociology, shows the place translation and interpreting occupies among social functional systems and its interactions with social forces and practices. With global coverage spanning all inhabited continents, the Handbook examines translational practices across diverse cultures and historical periods, from ancient origins to modern professional practices. Suitable for both undergraduate and postgraduate students of translation and interpreting, as well as researchers in the sociology of translation, the Handbook furnishes readers with a comprehensive understanding of the field. It offers a thorough exploration of the current state of the sociology of translation and suggests avenues for further research.

This thesis seeks to respond to the existing dearth of work on practical matters of intersemiotic translation in translation studies thus far by turning to other disciplines that have explored comparable phenomena in greater depth. In particular, in the current atmosphere of media convergence and transmedia production, characterized by the ubiquity of adaptations, remakes, spin-offs, and sequels in the entertainment industry, cross-media adaptation represents one of the most common and prominent forms of intersemiotic translation. Therefore, the various fields of inquiry related to current phenomena of intersemiotic translation, including adaptation studies, film studies, fan studies, and media studies in general, offer relevant and informative models for expanding our understanding of success in intersemiotic translation. The methodology employed involves an interdisciplinary descriptive approach, using examples of cross-media adaptation found in the works of one successful intersemiotic translator, Joss Whedon. Acknowledging the contextually contingent nature of any such case study, the findings of this thesis identify all three participants in cultural production - form, producer, and audience - as active contributors in the successful production and perpetuation of intersemiotic translations. In particular, this thesis explores possible causes of success in relation to specific cross-media adaptations, proposes attributes of the successful intersemiotic translator, and examines how the reiterative behaviors of active audiences, such as rereading, reinterpretation, and rewriting, help to extend a work's success. The capacity to inspire a continuing tradition of translation is itself a key contributing factor to the success of an intersemiotic translation and is most often performed with the collaboration of a community of interpreters. Achieving success is therefore a collective endeavor and a continual process of sustaining a work's presence in the collective consciousness by renewing its value across temporal, cultural, and semiotic systems. Based on these findings, notions of form, production, and reception in intersemiotic translation are understood by proposing a model of convergent translation, the notion of the auteur-translator, and a collaborative understanding of the construction of a text and its significance through the afterlife of translation.

This book builds on Marais’s innovative A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation to explore the implications of this conceptualization of translation as the semiotic work from which social-cultural reality emerges and chart the way forward for applications in empirical research. The volume brings together some of the latest developments in biosemiotics, social semiotics and Peircean semiotics with emergent work in translation studies towards better understanding the emergence of trajectories in society-culture through semiotic processes. The book further develops lines of thinking around thermodynamics in the work of Terrence Deacon to consider the ways in which ideas emerge from matter, creating meaning, and its opposites, namely the ways in which ideas constrain matter. Marais links these theoretical strands to empirical case studies in the final three chapters towards operationalizing these concepts for further empirical work. This book is aimed at academics in the fields of translation studies, semiotics, multimodal/multimedial studies, cultural studies and development studies. It will also be applicable to postgraduate students in these fields.

This volume applies digital humanities methodologies to indirect translations in testing the concatenation effect hypothesis. The concatenation effect hypothesis suggests that indirect translations tend to omit or alter identifiably foreign elements and also tend not to identify themselves as translations. The book begins by introducing the methodological framework to be applied in the chapters that follow and providing an overview of the hypothesis. The various chapters focus on specific aspects of the hypothesis that relate to specific linguistic, stylistic, and visual features of indirect translations. These features provide evidence that can be used to assess whether and to what extent the concatenation effect is in evidence in any given example. The overarching aim of the book is not to demonstrate or falsify the veracity of the concatenation effect hypothesis or to give any definitive answers to the research questions posed. Rather, the aim is to pique the curiosity and provoke the creativity of students and researchers in all areas of translation studies who may never have considered indirect translation as relevant to their work.

This volume showcases different forms of natural and non-professional translation and interpreting at work at multilingual sites in a single city, shedding new light on our understanding of the intersection of city, migration and translation. Flynn builds on work in translation studies, sociolinguistics, linguistic ethnography and anthropology to offer a translational perspective on scholarship on multilingualism and translation, focusing on examples from the superdiverse city of Ghent in Belgium. Each chapter comprises a different multilingual site, ranging from schools to eateries to public transport, and unpacks specific dimensions of translation practices within and against constantly shifting multilingual settings. The book also reflects on socio-political factors and methodological considerations of concern when undertaking such an approach. Taken together, the chapters seek to provide a composite picture of translation in a multilingual city, demonstrating how tracing physical, linguistic and social trajectories of movement in these contexts can deepen our understanding of the contemporary dynamics of multilingualism and natural translation and of translanguaging, more broadly. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in translation and interpreting studies, sociolinguistics, multilingualism, linguistic anthropology and migration studies.