On Translating Signs: Exploring Text and Semio-Translation (Approaches to Translation Studies 24)

Translation produces meaningful versions of textual information. But what is a text? What is translation? What is meaning? And what is a translational version? This book On Translating Signs: Exploring Text and Semio-Translation responds to those and other eternal translation-theoretical questions from a semiotic point of view. Dinda L. Gorlée notes that in this world of interpretation and translation, surrounded by our semio-translational universe "perfused with signs," we can intuit whether or not an object in front of us (dis)qualifies as a text. This spontaneous understanding requires no formalized definition in order to "happen" in the receivers of text-signs. The author further observes that translated signs are not only intelligible for target audiences, but also work together as a "theatre of consciousness" or a "theatre of controversy" which the author views as powered by Charles S. Peirce's three categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. This book presents the virtual community of translators as emotional, dynamical, intellectual but not infallible semioticians. They translate text-signs from one language and culture into another, thus creating an innovative sign-milieu packed with intuitive, dynamic, and changeable signs. Translators produce fleeting and fallible text-translations, with obvious errors caused by ignorance or misguided knowledge. Text-signs are translatable, yet there is no such thing as a perfect or "final" translation. And without the ongoing creating of translated signs of all kinds, there would be no novelty, no vagueness, no manipulation of texts and - for that matter - no semiosis. Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents Foreword Bibliography Text and Interdisciplinary Texture Introduction to the Semiotic Web of Text Toward a Working Definition of Text Interdisciplinary Texture Text-Linguistics and Text-Grammar Text, Word, and Sentence Text Semiotics Peirce, Text and Sign Text and Semiosis Textual Reasoning Barthes's Work and Text Notes Bibliography Semiotranslation and Abductive Translation Semiotranslation Semiotranslation and Interpretive Webs Target-Oriented Futurology Text-Manipulative Activities Image, Model, Metaphor The Eureka Procedure: Pragmatic Discovery in Translation Abduction: Intuition vs. Instinct Translation: Justification vs. Discovery Semiotranslation Revisited Abduction and Translational Creativity The Translator's Eureka Experience Notes Bibliography Trial and (T)error: Peirce's Fallibilism and Semiotranslation Peirce's Sop to Cerberus True and False Signs Force, Continuity, Evolution Synechism and Freud Errors in Fallacy Transparency and Traducement in Translation Errant Errors in Semiotranslation Fact and Fancy of Quasi-Thought Fantastic Tricks Fixing Belief Notes Bibliography Name Index Subject Index Gorlée presents three essays she has written over the past decade. They cover text and interdisciplinary texture from such perspectives as text semiotics and textual reasoning; semiotranslation and abductive translation from such perspectives as target-oriented futurology and the translator's eureka experience; and the fallibilism and semiotranslation of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR This chapter is about the phenomenon of text, textuality and texture, and prepares the way for the upcoming chapters concerning metatextuality, which is the technical name for secondary, derivative literature on texts (Popovic 1975: 12-13).