Intersemiotic Translation Research Articles

No murder without a clue: An intersemiotic translation of murders in And Then There Were None

The aim of this study is to analyze the detective novel titled And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie to find out the implicit or explicit clues in the conflict part of the plot to allow the readers to be able to draw inferences or anticipations on the resolution. Following the identification of the relevant contexts in the source text, the TV mini series adaptation of the novel is also analyzed in comparison to the source contexts to find out the extent of preservation or omission of the meaning in intersemiotic translation. The contexts with implicit or explicit clues are discussed in relation to discursive techniques in a narration, particularly anticipation and amorce techniques. The relevant contexts in the source text are mostly found to be preserved in the target text. However, this preservation does not come directly copying or transferring the content to the target text, rather the dynamics different between a literary text and audiovisual text could impel the intersemiotic translator to employ the compensation technique in the adaptation process. A text of visual and cognitive nature is translated to another semiotic system incorporating the auditory aspect to TV adaptations, resulting in translation decisions different from interlingual translations. As a result of the analysis, it is recommended that compensation technique could allow the target viewers to gather anticipations as regards the resolution as is the case with source readers in intersemiotic translation. Therefore, what counts in novel-to-TV adaptations turns out to be the extent of similarity rather than a quest for sameness.

(Re)Wording War: Re-narration of a positive Sri Lanka in the 61<sup>st</sup> Independence Day Speech by President Mahinda Rajapaksa

In the field of politics, translation inherently connects with activism. When a government translates itself for local and international audiences, translation becomes an act of re-narration aimed to reconfigure a reality desired by the country. Taking Sinhala as the Source Language, and English as the Target language, this research uses the narrative theory of translation as re-narration to analyze the President’s address to the nation at the 61st Independence Day Celebrations of Sri Lanka in 2009. Both the inter-lingual translation from Sinhala to English, and the inter-semiotic translation from spoken to printed text are analyzed. The context of Sri Lanka in 2009 is critical in terms of the ‘victory’ for the Sri Lankan forces in the fight against the LTTE, as well as the international attention for the war and the allegations made against human rights violations by the army. It can be argued that then President Mahinda Rajapaksa uses the Independence Day Celebrations as a platform to narrate a positive image of Sri Lanka by referring to the humanitarian aspect of the war and the governmental forces. The findings imply how activism via translation operates from administrative levels to outside (i.e., those who are not involved in administrative work), how certain ideas are omitted, added, and at times deliberately mistranslated to manipulate a positive reconfiguration of Sri Lanka, and how communicative equivalence may render certain nuanced use of language untranslatable. Further, it shows the lapses that occur in inter-semiotic translation, especially when a speech is accompanied by supporting oratory, visual elements.

Audio Description in Abstract Art

The aim of this article is to analyze the linguistic techniques used to develop the audio description (AD) for a multimedia video installation and to reflect critically upon creativity and “invisibility” of AD in abstract art. Considering AD as a type of intersemiotic translation, a functionalist approach to audio description (Mazur, 2020) was adopted as our theoretical framework. Taking into account that the main function of art is aesthetic (Eisner, 2022; Iseminger, 2004) and considering the main goals of the exhibition, we embarked in a challenging decision-making process to determine what linguistic and creative techniques to use our particular piece. Among those techniques, metaphors proved to be very effective tools. The results indicate that the main metaphors to describe abstract art were synesthesia, participation, and vocal emphasis metaphors. Another conclusion is related to the degree of creativity in audio describing abstract art and the boundaries that the audio describer can easily trespass by creating metaphors that go beyond the source domain of the original work. It is precisely here where the function of the art piece and the purpose of the exhibition play a crucial role in finding that balance between fidelity and creativity. Lay summary This article analyses the linguistic techniques used to create audio description —the translation of images into words mainly intended for blind audiences— for a multimedia video installation in an art museum. Taking into account that the main function of art is aesthetic (Iseminger, 2004) and considering the main goals of the exhibition, we embarked on a challenging decision-making process to determine what linguistic and creative techniques to use for our particular piece. Among those techniques, metaphors proved to be very effective tools (Luque Colmenero & Soler Gallego, 2020). The results indicate that the main metaphors to describe abstract art were synaesthesia —incorporation of sensations experienced by senses such as touch, smell or hearing—, and vocal emphasis. Another conclusion is related to the degree of creativity in audio describing abstract art and the boundaries that the audio describer can easily trespass by crafting metaphors that go beyond the original work. It is precisely here where the function of the art piece and the purpose of the exhibition play a crucial role in finding that balance between fidelity and creativity.

Przekład intersemiotyczny. Przypadek znaku drogowego, ekfrazy i adaptacji filmowej


 
 
 The article is an attempt to clarify and refine the ways of understanding two basic types of translation: from one language into another ethnic language (translation proper) – i.e. following the principles of translating homo- geneous systems of signs – and from one system of signs to another, e.g. verbal to iconic, or vice versa, which is sometimes called transmutation. Therefore, the starting point for the discussion is Roman Jakobson’s well-known typology of translation, which also took into account cases of intralingual translation within the same language, called rewording. However, the article mainly focuses on various cases of intersemiotic translation and thus transmutation, meaning situations where a text expressed in one system of signs is translated into a system of a different nature. The primary research question concerns what is actually being translated in such a situation and how this type of translation differs from a typical language-to-language translation. The article is chiefly theoretical, and the examples concern the cases of translating verbal signs into iconic ones, such as the rules governing traffic into a road sign, the translation of an image (a painting, photography) into a literary text (ekphrasis and its varieties), and a film adaptation. The equivalence of codes secures the adequacy of a linguistic translation. In the case of ekphrasis, the image is usually replaced by a verbal narrative, and in a film adaptation, the type and sequence of iconic signs must simply be invented because these sign systems are not directly equivalent, as Benveniste and Lotman believe. Examples that illustrate the main theses of the article are Jacek Kaczmarski’s art-inspired songs, several film adaptations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Polański, Kurosawa), and Agnieszka Holland’s film adaptation (Pokot [Spoor]) of one of Olga Tokarczuk’s novels.
 
 

Your translated memory or mine? Re-membering graphic novels in performed audio descriptions for The Cartoon Museum, London

ABSTRACT This article offers a practical and theoretical exploration of a (highly) specialised type of comics re-mediation, namely, audio described (AD) comics for the Blind and Partially Sighted (BPS). Building on relevant work in comics studies and translation studies, it is argued that translation activity, broadly seen to include interlingual as well as intersemiotic translation (Jakobson 1959), helps rewrite original works. Translation is defined as a blend, or a hybrid mental space combining characteristics of source and target contexts. As such, it entails the imbrication of personal memory, collective memory and the diffusion of a translator’s memory in linguistic codes, social milieus, textual traditions and digital capabilities at play. AD exhibits the same blend logic in that it selectively contains visual source-text information in target-text audio performance. An exploratory comics AD pilot project at The Cartoon Museum (London) serves as an exemplar. The project consists of three phases: a focused interview with the creative team (describer, curator, comic artists); scripting and performance of three AD samples; and collecting feedback from BPS visitors. The project reveals how collective memory started to form in this dialogic process and, ultimately, which aspects of AD practice may be deemed to be effective.

A Multimodal Approach to Zhuang-English Translation of the Baeu Rodo Scriptures

The Beu Rodo scriptures are texts sung by boumo, a Zhuang ritual priest at rites. They reflect the primitive belief of the ancient forebears of the Zhuang group in China. As a scriptural heritage of the Zhuang minority nationality, the scriptures have become a significant cultural carrier in the English world through translations. Based on the published English translations, this paper analyzes the combined use of verbal and visual modes in translating the Baeu Rodo scriptures into English. David Holm’s Recalling Lost Souls is under examination as a case study. Theories of multimodal discourse analysis and intersemiotic translation give guidance for examination and discussion. First, the authors bring under examination how verbal and visual modes interacted to produce Recalling Lost Souls, an example of multimodal translation; then they move on to discuss how the translator managed to realize the representational, interactive, and compositional meanings in a multimodal whole. It is concluded that linguistic and non-linguistic modes can work together to produce a multimodal translation, a workable approach to Z-E translation of the Baeu Rodo scriptures leading to higher readability of their translated works in the English world.

“Heed the Mute Language of Nature”: An Ecosemiotic Approach to Urban Wildlife Photography as Translation of Solastalgia1

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to conceptualise urban wildlife photography as so-called intersemiotic translation by reconceptualising the photographer as a translator who acts as “a mediator in an experiential process that allows the recipient (viewer, listener, reader or participant) to re-create the sense […] of the source artefact for him or herself” (Cultural Literacy in Europe, in [Bennett, K. 2019. “Editor’s Introduction. The New Iconicity: Challenges for Translation Theory and Practice.” Translation Matters 1 (2): 1–8], 3). By reframing the focus from an anthropocentric ethic to a biocentric ethic on the loss of place and belonging experienced by non-human animals in urban ecologies, in particular, this paper intends to explore the role of urban wildlife photography as translation of solastalgia in re-evaluating our current human values towards the natural world. Originally defined as “distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment” [Albrecht, G., Sartore, G.-M., Connor, L., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., Kelly, B., Stain, H., Tonna, A. and Pollard, G. (2007) “Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change”, Australasian Psychiatry, 15(1_suppl), pp. S95–S98], solastalgia, it is argued in this paper, should be extended to include the experience of the non-human as well. Photography, it is argued here, is one way in which this experience can be critically depicted and translated to a human audience. By means of an interdisciplinary discussion between Translation Studies and Critical Theory (through Walter Benjamin and Bernard Stiegler), we attempt to provide an ecosemiotic exploration of the conceptual grounding of urban wildlife photography as intersemiotic translation.

Omissions and inferential meaning-making in audio description, and implications for automating video content description

There is broad consensus that audio description (AD) is a modality of intersemiotic translation, but there are different views in relation to how AD can be more precisely conceptualised. While Benecke (Audiodeskription als partielle Translation. Modell und Methode, LIT, Berlin, 2014) characterises AD as ‘partial translation’, Braun (T 28: 302–313, 2016) hypothesises that what audio describers appear to ‘omit’ from their descriptions can normally be inferred by the audience, drawing on narrative cues from dialogue, mise-en-scène, kinesis, music or sound effects. The study reported in this paper tested this hypothesis using a corpus of material created during the H2020 MeMAD project. The MeMAD project aimed to improve access to audiovisual (AV) content through a combination of human and computer-based methods of description. One of the MeMAD workstreams addressed human approaches to describing visually salient cues. This included an analysis of the potential impact of omissions in AD, which is the focus of this paper. Using a corpus of approximately 500 audio described film extracts we identified the visual elements that can be considered essential for the construction of the filmic narrative and then performed a qualitative analysis of the corresponding audio descriptions to determine how these elements are verbally represented and whether any omitted elements could be inferred from other cues that are accessible to visually impaired audiences. We then identified the most likely source of these inferences and the conditions upon which retrieval could be predicated, preparing the ground for future reception studies to test our hypotheses with target audiences. In this paper, we discuss the methodology used to determine where omissions occur in the analysed audio descriptions, consider worked examples from the MeMAD500 film corpus, and outline the findings of our study namely that various strategies are relevant to inferring omitted information, including the use of proximal and distal contextual cues, and reliance on the application of common knowledge and iconic scenarios. To conclude, consideration is given to overcoming significant omissions in human-generated AD, such as using extended AD formats, and mitigating similar gaps in machine-generated descriptions, where incorporating dialogue analysis and other supplementary data into the computer model could resolve many omissions.

Liaisons fructueuses : théories des sémioticiens français comme source d’inspiration pour les chercheurs polonais en traduction intersémiotique

FRUCTUOUS LIAISONS: THEORIES OF FRENCH SEMIOTICIANS AS A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR POLISH RESEARCHERS IN INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION
 Today, reflection on film adaptation and intersemiotic translation oscillates between two extremes: “one-off” analyses of concrete works on the one hand, and global reflection on the multimodal nature of new media, on the other. From this perspective, intersemioticity is conceived as a quality “hidden” in every text, including those with no other codes than the verbal code; in such cases, adapting the text to other media “reveals” its intrinsic intersemiotic potential. But in following this new path, scholars have moved away from the original aim of the French Semiotics: to prove that Jakobson was right in declaring that intersemiotic translation is a process that can be compared to interlinguistic translation, that the former is subject to the same rules as the latter and, consequently, that transmutation can be analyzed using the methods and tools originally created for interlinguistic translation. There is, however, a group of Polish researchers who have carried out, and continue to carry out, in-depth research into the problem of “adaptation-as-translation”. In this article, I shall attempt to outline the impact that French theory (first filmological, then semiotic and semiological) has had on intersemiotic translation research (by authors publishing both in French and in Polish); my second aim is to familiarize French-speaking readers with the “Polish school’s” theories of adaptation-as-translation, especially those of Seweryna Wysłouch, and their potential to promote and deepen reflection on the language of film and intersemiotic translation.

Translating the untranslatable

ABSTRACT Apart from the issue of the translatability of the Qur’an, the practice of translating the Qur’an into Indonesian has captured the attention of scholars. Some studies argue that there was a pause in activity after the composition of Tarjumān al-Mustafīd, a translation from Arabic to Malay in the 17th century. This viewpoint is primarily influenced by the expectation of finding a complete translation work similar to Tarjumān. However, this article contends that translating the Qur’an has always been an ongoing practice before and after Tarjumān. The aim of these translation practices, however, is not necessarily to create a work translated from one language to another, but rather to serve as a pedagogical activity that produces knowledge about the meaning of the Qur’an. This idea stems from the concept within translation studies that the term ‘translation’ encompasses not only the conventional act of translating between languages but can also involve intralingual translation and inter-semiotic translation. This proposition finds reinforcement in the presence of numerous Jalālayn manuscripts dating back to the late 19th century, which were employed within educational institutions known as pesantren and surau in East Java and West Sumatra.

Intersemiotic Translation in The story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife in Kamaluddin Behzad’s Painting and Youssef Prophet TV series

Intersemiotic Translation in The story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife in Kamaluddin Behzad’s Painting and Youssef Prophet TV series

FILM ADAPTATION OF A LITERARY WORKS AS A SPECIFIC TYPE OF INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION

This paper deals with the problem of the phenomenon of intersemiotic translation in the field of film translation, which provides recoding of a work from one sign system to another. The process of intersemiotic translation has certain features and creates a special system of relations between the literary source and its film adaptation. Intersemiotic translation represents the field of new linguistic processes, as they tend to create different interpretations of signs. During the process of translating a literary work into the language of cinema, the skills and emotions of the actors play a significant role, as well as the ability of the director and screenwriter to identify the key elements of the literary piece that must be translated effectively into the language of film. Methods used in the study: a comparative method (contrast of lexical, grammatical and phonetic phenomena in English and Ukrainian), a descriptive method, and a method of observation.

English-Ukrainian intersemiotic translation within the configuration of modes of modality in literary texts

The article highlights the main features of intersemiotic translation of a literary text, which is considered to be an expression of the author’s modality as a set of signs of various semiotic systems. Thus, the purpose of the study is to determine the linguistic and non-linguistic means of expressing modality in a literary text, the specifics of their interaction to generate meaning, and the features of their reproduction in intersemiotic translation. The object of modality in translation within a literary text is a set of signs encoded by the author of the source text and organized into a system that is decoded and reproduced by the translator both at the phonological, lexical, and syntactic levels and the semantic, emotional, and associative ones. The analysis of the category of modality from the standpoint of semiotics in literary texts involves decoding semiotic resources, symbols, and signs, taking into account the individual author’s, social, political, cultural, and national contexts. The process of interpreting and reproducing the sign configurations of individual author modality is carried out at the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic levels to achieve the corresponding aims. Thus, at the first stage, the forms and interactions of determinants are defined and interpreted whereas the second level involves consideration of the internal semantic plane of the research object, and, accordingly, at the third level, the influence and use of signs are outlined. It is proved that adequate literary translation is carried out based on the multimodality of the text that is viewed as a multimodal communication, within which meaning is generated by the configuration of different semiotic sign systems that require interpretation according to the principle of optimal relevance and creativity. The central concept of translation is semiosis as a process of interpretation of a sign and generation of meaning, that indicates the relationship of the sign with the outside world.

Sparking the imagination: creative language pedagogies as intersemiotic translation

ABSTRACT In this paper, we use the lens of embodied language cognition and intersemiosis to argue for the importance of developing creative approaches to language work in classroom settings and we cite as an example some activities from a workshop that was developed for modern foreign languages (MFL) trainee teachers in London (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9hR-LQ0xOE). The workshop resulted from a collaboration between an applied linguist (Coffey) and an artist-educator (Patel), and combined their shared understanding of language use as an emotional, embodied enterprise etched into our autobiographical identities. We suggest that working with intersemiotic approaches to language has the potential to reinvigorate language pedagogy by challenging dominant metaphors both of ‘language’ and of ‘learning’. The paper intends both to make a practical contribution in its reporting of activities, which we hope will inspire teachers and teacher educators to develop intersemiotic approaches for their own settings, and also to contribute to the broader scholarship that calls for ‘reframing teacher cognition’ (e.g. Coffey [2015]. Reframing teachers’ language knowledge through metaphor analysis of language portraits. The Modern Language Journal 99, no. 3: 500–14), even ‘liberating language education’ (e.g. Lytra et al. [2022]. Liberating Language Education. Bristol: Multilingual Matters), to imagine new orientations for how we engage with languages in our lives and our classrooms.

An early intersemiotic translator of Milton in Brazil

This article provides the commented English translation of an ode (“To Milton”, composed of twelve stanzas) by the 18th-century Brazilian poet, Claudio Manuel da Costa. Our interpretation of the translated poem problematizes the fact that da Costa did not translate Milton’s works, but that he wrote an intersemiotic translation of Milton’s contributions to literature as a whole. “To Milton” concentrates and expands on themes related to Paradise Lost (hell and heaven, heavenly muses and earthly glory, civil wars and epic battles). Although there were no translations of Milton’s works into Brazilian Portuguese then, the ode illustrates the principles of intersemiotic translation, through which semantic expansions occur in the exercise of da Costa’s choices to invite Milton to participate in a nascent literary tradition; he approaches Milton as an author comparable to Camões and Torquato Tasso. Furthermore, we address the following questions: what does the commented translation reveal about Milton’s poetry that has not been as readily visible or legible? What was accomplished by bringing Milton into 18th-century Brazilian Portuguese? How is Milton accommodated to 18th-century Brazil and how is this new environment, prospectively or actually, different for having Milton in it?

Literary style in the novel and on the screen: The intersemiotic translation of Far from the Madding Crowd

Since Roman Jakobson’s classification of intersemiotic translation as a sub-category of translation, the term has paved the way for many studies on the close relationship between literature and cinema. Among different semiotic systems, the adaptation of literary works to the cinema occupies a central position in intersemiotic translation. In this respect, the present study approaches Far from the Madding Crowd directed by Thomas Vinterberg in 2015 as an intersemiotic translation of Thomas Hardy’s novel under the same title. It aims to evaluate how Hardy’s two major stylistic markers in the novel, i.e. sentence structure and imagery, are brought to the film by Vinterberg. To this end, the notions of transfer and intersemiotic transposition were used to identify related stylistic components in the novel and to compare them with their visual representations in the film. Thus, Vinterberg’s specific choices in reflecting Hardy’s literary style were analyzed. The findings of the present study suggest that Vinterberg paid attention to Hardy’s literary style and attempted to transfer it to the film to a large extent, as he reflected the writer’s sentence structure and imagery through various visual and auditory tools. However, it can be also observed that possibly due to the limited duration of the film, Vinterberg sometimes had to avoid transferring Hardy’s elaborate narration in some scenes.

Adaptation as Intersemiotic Translation: From The Tale of Kiều (Nguyen Du) to Kim Van Kieu (Nguyen Bach Tuyet)

Adaptation as Intersemiotic Translation: From The Tale of Kiều (Nguyen Du) to Kim Van Kieu (Nguyen Bach Tuyet)

Creativity as the driving force of screen adaptations (based on the “Lost Symbol”)

The article deals with the creative aspect of screen adaptations as a form of intersemiotic translation. It considers the film-makers’ creativity as a tool employed to ensure commercial appeal of the target media product while following the conventions of meaning-making in the multimodal space of cinema and preserving social and cultural features of the source. Adapters are not bound by the equivalence criterion to the same extent literary translators are. However, the choice of the work of literature is never made at random, it is determined by the value of the source text for the target audience. Consequently, its reinterpretation shall meet the expectations of those familiar with the original but also respect the affordances in force in a medium where the visual aspect prevails over language. The current paper studies the screen adaptation of “The Lost Symbol” by Dan Brown, a novel filled with mystery but also focused on the broad historical and cultural perspective on the facts and myths surrounding the Order of Masons. The film-makers choose to emphasize the quest-like nature of the narrative by increasing the number of riddles in the spirit of Freemasonry in order to reinforce suspense. Their characters also evolve in terms of personalities they endowed with. Their feelings and emotions in the novel are solely restricted to what is required in order to pursue the search. The actors’ play, however, cannot be as simple as that which urges film-makers to elaborate on every facet of their individuality. A complex mixture of fear, love, curiosity, regret, inspiration and much more become the driving force of the story. Meanwhile, the ancient wisdom they seek is no longer reserved for a limited circle of the enlightened but for anyone able to see through the symbols.

From/Towards a Multiple Sign System: Autism Novelized and Retold in Interlingual and Intersemiotic Contexts

The focus of this study is to analyse selected signs of neurodiversity in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and its interlingual and intersemiotic translations to examine readers' as well as translators' (as readers) role in the formation of the meaning, along with literature's contribution to neuro-inclusiveness. Taking the prevalent assumptions that the main character has autism as a reference point, despite the author's statement that he did not base his work on a specific syndrome, some brief information about autism spectrum disorder is provided, and the protagonist Christopher's autistic-like characteristics are reviewed with reference to the common features of the disorder. The target texts in Turkish, Azerbaijani, and French are defined as interlingual translations, and the stage performance in Turkiye is defined as intersemiotic translation. The target texts are compared to the source text using Öztürk Kasar's "Systematics of Designification in Translation" to discuss the extent to which signs featuring autism are transferred in the target texts and to highlight the contribution of the source and target texts to the acknowledgement and appreciation of differences.

A Multimodal Intersemiotic Translation Study of Book Covers of Translated Versions of The Three-Body Problems

As The Three-Body Problem is translated into languages overseas, the diversified features that the cover design of the translated version of The Three-Body Problem are worth exploring. The covers of a series of Chinese science fiction with different characteristics construct various narrative styles through different symbols and present the uniqueness and readability of the content of this Chinese science fiction. From the perspective of multi-modality in social semiotics, respecting the representational meaning, the cover design of these translations can be divided into two categories: low-image and high-image, and at the same time, it also presents visual continuum features; In terms of interpersonal meaning, these versions display visual patterns; Concerning compositional meaning, the designers of these covers convey the information values from different countries through layout design and visual salience. The cover design organizes meaningful elements into coherent text and creates new meanings through specific structures. Although some misunderstandings exist in some translated versions of The Three-Body Problem, most of the translated versions originally restore the original grand story about the future of the Earth, the only home to humans, reflecting reality and humanism in a unique manner with Chinese characteristics.