SEMIOTICS OF TEXT vs. SEMIOTICS OF DISCOURSE: SEARCHING THE ADEQUATE EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE FOR LITERARY TRANSLATION STUDIES

SEMIOTICS OF TEXT vs. SEMIOTICS OF DISCOURSE: SEARCHING THE ADEQUATE EPISTEMOLOGICAL BASE FOR LITERARY TRANSLATION STUDIES

Author:  K.I. Leontyeva

Affiliation:  Moscow Institute of Public Administration and Law

Abstract: 
Russian Literary Translation Studies are mainly based on essentialist semiotics of text (structuralism), which presumes the meaning of a literary text to be stable and thus identical for its author and its recipient. As a result our theorists still adhere to the essentialist concept of equivalent or adequate translation centered on the author’s intention.
A large part of Western translation theorists, on the contrary, adhere to the so-called semiotics of discourse or interpretative semiotics (poststructuralism and deconstruction). This type of semiotics seems to be a more adequate episteme for Translation Studies, as it presumes meaning instability to be the essence of any communicative practice, translation not being an exception. A logical consequence of such nonessentialist presumption is recognition and legalization of meaning dynamics in translation (i.e. its variability, deviation, inferentiality and innovation), which in its turn is a logical consequence of a natural gap existing between unique discursive environments (a complex of different linguistic, extra-, pragma- and psycholinguistic factors), relevant for the author and the translator, which predetermine the process and the result of text creation and/or comprehension.
From this point of view equivalence and adequacy in translation are actually impossible. This conclusion may help to resolve at last a long-drawn debate over the possibility of fidelity and invisibility of translator in literary translation.

Keywords:  literary translation studies, semio-discursive ontology, interpretative semiotics (semiotics of discourse), translator’s visibility, meaning deviation, inferentiality, nonessentialism

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Pages:  75-80