Specific features of intersemiotic translation of symbols from the perspective of conceptual and semiotic paradigm

Natalia Holubenko

doi:10.34069/ai/2021.47.11.27

Abstract

The text of the novel “Inferno” written by Dan Brown and its film adaptation, provide the material for the analysis of symbols and their importance in both art forms. This analysis, which rests on the thesis of the conceptual nature of symbols in any literary text, is made in conceptual and semantic fields, and the concepts denoted by the analyzed symbols are pointed out. Given that the text of the source novel is abundant in symbols of various degrees of textual importance, not all of them were subject of research in this paper. The basic symbol of the source text, the Inferno, was singled out, as well as a number of symbols embodied by novel and film personages. In the research, frequent techniques of intersemiotic translations were analyzed as concerns their role in symbol rendering: omission, typical of the studied case of intersemiotic translation, which can be combined with the technique of addition. In the latter case, the degree of expressive force of the symbol can be considerably altered. The greatest shift in the degree of importance of a symbol is named ‘symbol transformation’, it is observed when symbols (in the given case, symbolic personages of the source text) lose their expressive force and the features of a symbol, i.e., in the process of intersemiotic translation these symbols are lost. The suggested model of analysis can be applied in other cases of intersemiotic translation, and other techniques, together with their combinations, can be found.

Highlights

This section is devoted to the history of intersemiotic translation as a research matter
This paper is aimed at the study of specific features of intersemiotic translation of symbols in the novel “Inferno” by Dan Brown and its film adaptation
The symbols of a literary text are understood as wholly individual creations which are connected with certain concepts they express

Summary

Introduction

This section is devoted to the history of intersemiotic translation as a research matter. Can in general terms be understood as the way of interpreting verbal signs in frames of the system of nonverbal signs (Jakobson, 1959) This multimedia approach has received well-earned attention among linguists, as with the development of various media means literary pieces are turned into pieces of music, reproduced in the shape of screenplays, comics, musicals, cartoons etc. Jakobson still in late 70-ies of the last century, this multimedia approach to the study of works of art remained at the periphery of linguistic research, notwithstanding a centuries-old history of the synthesis of arts. These scholars introduced a deep reconsideration of the previous linguistic gains and viewed a text as a unified semiotic system. The interrelation between the film and the fictional text that serves as the basis of it, or the two-way feedback between the basic story and the accomplished film, may be regarded by means of constructing “model” readers or viewers, which are considered as text strategies that advance into action or cease their operating reciprocally

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