Coquet's “Theory of instances of enunciation” in the analysis of Othello from the perspective of semiotics of translation

Abstract

The aim of this study is to make a semiotic analysis of William Shakespeare’s play titled Othello in the light of Jean-Claude Coquet's “Theory of Instances of Enunciation” and compare Turkish translations of the contexts analyzed in the original play from semiotics of translation point of view with a view to determining the meaning transformations in the meaning universe of the play. To this end, non-subject discourses in the source text were analyzed based on Coquet's “Theory of Instances of Enunciation” (1997, 2007). The non-subjects determined in the play were further divided into sub-categories in the light of Öztürk Kasar's (2019) typology of non-subjects. For translation evaluation, four Turkish translations of the play were analyzed based on Öztürk Kasar's “Systematics of Designification in Translation”. Determination of contexts with non-subject instances in the play was followed by the classification of those non-subjects. The instances in these contexts were classified as non-subjects submissive to an immanent component under the effect of passions in dysphoric state. Translation evaluation of non-subject contexts yielded examples for eight of the nine designificative tendencies put forward by Öztürk Kasar. The findings of translation evaluation demonstrate that literary translators could benefit from designificative tendencies in overcoming the pitfalls in a literary text. Moreover, raising translator candidates’ awareness of designificative tendencies could enable them to decide when and how to use or refrain from those tendencies in literary translation.