Cover not available
Article published In:
Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 14:1 (2019) ► pp.75–94

‘Intersemiotic translating’

Time for a rethink?

| York University
Should transpositions between language and other sign systems be considered a kind of translation? The answer could be yes if the comparison is made to interlingual translating that features a high degree of variance. Here, however, the question will be whether there are any kinds of intersemiotic transposition that feature a high degree of invariance. Four criteria are suggested for defining invariance-oriented translation, and a variety of possible instances of invariant intersemiotic translation are considered, with special mention of transpositions to and from music.
Keywords: intersemiotic, invariance, translation and imagery, music
Article outline
  • Defining criteria for ‘translating’
  • Intersemiotic transposition
  • Trivial examples of intersemiotic invariance
  • Back-translatability
  • Regular correspondences
  • Freestandingness
  • FAFSiness (few additions, few subtractions)
  • Visual/linguistic transposition: The wrong place to look for translating
  • Linguistic/musical transposition: The right place to look?
  • Further investigation
  • Which criteria?
  • Coda – Jakobson dixit
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 5 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.00031.mos
References (32)
References
Apter, Ronnie and Mark Herman. 2016. Translating for Singing. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Bellos, David. 2011. Is That a Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bluestone, George. 1957. Novels into Film: The Metamorphosis of Fiction into Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Catford, John. 1965. A Linguistic Theory of Translation. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cattrysse, Patrick. 2014. Descriptive Adaptation Studies: Epistemological and Methodological Issues. Antwerp: Garant.Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 2001. Experiences in Translation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
. 2003. Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.Google Scholar
. 2003/2015. Dire presque la même chose [Saying almost the same thing], trans. by Myriem Bouzaher of Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Paris: Grasset.Google Scholar
Fraser, Ryan. 2012. “Evading frames: D’Antin van Rooten’s homophonic Mother Goose.” TTR 25 (1): 51–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Guest, Ann H. and Claudia Jeschke. 1991. Nijinsky’s Faune Restored. Philadelphia: Gordon and Breach.Google Scholar
Holmes, James S. 1972/1988. “The name and nature of translation studies.” In Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies, 67–80. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Hjelmslev, Louis. 1943/1961. Prolegomena to a Theory of Language, trans. by Francis Whitfield of Omkring sprogteoriens grundlæggelse. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. 1959. “On linguistic aspects of translation.” In On Translation, ed. by Reuben A. Brower, 232–239. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1960. “Closing statement: Linguistics and poetics.” In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas Sebeok, 350–377. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jencks, Charles. 2003. The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. London: Frances Lincoln.Google Scholar
Lerdahl, Fred. 2013. “Musical syntax and its relation to linguistic syntax.” In Language, Music and the Brain: A Mysterious Relationship, ed. by M. Arbib, 257–272. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Li, Charles. 2007. “Foreign names into native tongues: How to transfer sound between languages.” Target 19 (1): 45–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mallarmé, Stéphane. 1886/1945. “Ballets.” In Oeuvres complètes, 303–307. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Melnick, David. 1983. Men in Aida. Tuumba 471. Berkeley, CA: Tuumba Press.Google Scholar
Mendelsund, Peter. 2014. What We See When We Read. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Mossop, Brian. 2016. “‘Intralingual translation’: A useful concept?” Across Languages and Cultures 17 (1): 1–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017a. “Invariance orientation: Identifying an object for translation studies.” Translation Studies 10 (3): 329–356. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017b. “When translation is not about meaning.” Babel 63 (5): 621–642. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. “Judging a translation by its cover.” The Translator 24 (1): 1–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Néagu, Philippe, Jean-Michel Nectoux, Claudia Jeschke and Ann H. Guest. 1990. Nijinsky: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Newmark, Peter. 2013. “Art song in translation.” In Music, Text and Translation, ed. by Helen J. Minors, 59–68. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1897/1931. “On signs, ground, object, and interpretant.” In volume 21 of Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss and Arthur W. Burks, 81 vol., 1931–1958, 134–136. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.Google Scholar
Pereira, Nilce. 2008. “Book illustration as (intersemiotic) translation: pictures translating words.” Meta 53 (1): 104–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Raw, Laurence (ed.). 2012. Translation, Adaptation and Transformation. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Risku, Hanna and Richard Pircher. 2008. “Visual aspects of intercultural technical communication: A cognitive scientific and semiotic point of view.” Meta 53 (1): 154–166. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sütiste, Elin and Peeter Torop. 2007. “Processual boundaries of translation: Semiotics and translation studies.” Semiotica 1631: 187–207.Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Chen, Shukun & Zenan Zhong
2022. Perceiving the poetic world: A corpus-assisted transitivity analysis of poetry comics. Frontiers in Psychology 13 DOI logo
Jiang, Mengying
2021. Book cover as intersemiotic translation: between image, text and culture. Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 8:3 ► pp. 219 ff. DOI logo
Sütiste, Elin
2021. Intersemiotic translation. In Handbook of Translation Studies [Handbook of Translation Studies, 5], ► pp. 128 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.