Evangelos Kourdis

Semiotics of Translation: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Translation

It is not surprising that over the past decades, many researchers have searched for theories and research tools in the area of semiotics to explore translation issues. Translation constitutes a semiotic act, since there is transition from one semiotic system to another, verbal or nonverbal. It is true that semiotics can become the mediator among the sciences of meaning. The most important reason why semiotics can perform this role is because, as Gilles Deleuze states, it is a science descriptive of the reality, the everyday culture. So it is the most appropriate research field to contribute to the study of translation, a purely cultural act. The relation between semiotics and translation is presented in this chapter from a sociosemiotic and critical perspective.

Cultural semiotics, translatability, and informational loss in visual texts of the biotech industry

The paper examines a specific advertising campaign of a biotech company characteristic of the whole biotech industry and discusses how the evocation of universal values, such as the protection and correct management of the planet’s resources, the struggle against poverty and against the shortage of raw materials, the support of farmers and their families, distorts information about nature, global agriculture and the biotech industry’s products. This distortion is a necessary and vital part of this industry’s existence. The rhetorical techniques of conscious informational repression and distortion, which are often discussed only in terms of informational loss , are expressly evident and even taken to their extremes in the case of biotechnology. Yet on the other hand they are characteristic of a translation process that takes place in the rhetoric of advertisement in general, as is evident in the use of Goran Sonesson’s translation model which we suggest is appropriate for the definition and study of advertising codes.

Spatial composition as intersemiotic translation: The journey of a pattern through time from a translation semiotics theory perspective

Abstract In this paper I examine cases where spatial composition produces intersemiotic translations for artistic and advertising purposes in a period where globalization permits and profits by the intertextual evoking of cultural texts. Thus globalization gives us the chance to promote new messages that contribute, in their turn, to a series of cultural interpretations that enrich the forms of modern communication. Accepting one of the basic theses of Translation Semiotics that intersemiotic translation or transmutation may occur among nonverbal sign systems, I will be examining cases of intersemiotic (intericonic) translations having as source texts artistic texts. My basic conclusion is that in these intersemiotic translations the source text although absent, is always present due to world cultural memory. Furthermore, the repetitiveness in the use of these old and well-known original texts, and their inscription in the collective memory as high cultural value texts, seems to affect the fact that they have been chosen as texts capable of being transmuted. Finally, I argue that translation can also be understood as a re-narration of cultural knowledge using different signs but on the same or similar sign space.

The Notion of Code in Semiotics and Semiotically Informed Translation Studies. A Preliminary Study

The term code is largely used in the fields of Linguistics, Semiotics, and Translation Studies, but not in a consistent manner. Translation scholars seem to use this term through a semiotic perspective that connotes the complexity of the translation process. This complexity has to do with the transition from one cultural structure to another, a transition that led to coining terms such as equivalence, correspondence, etc. Theorists of translation, in their effort to explain the epistemological character of translation, related the translation process to adjacent disciplines such as linguistics, theory of communication and semiotics, where the term code is a key-term. The same term is used in a different way by semioticians. In this article, I will attempt to answer two questions, namely: how does Roman Jakobson, in his seminal essay on translation, approach the concept of code, and, what do semioticians and semiotically informed translation scholars mean or imply with the use of the concept of code.

Languages in Contact, Cultures in Contact: Verbal and Iconic Visual Signs in Mother Tongue and Culture as Mediators in Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Interlingual translation, intersemiotic translation, and mediation seem to be the main means by which students who are learning English as a foreign language in Greece connect the learning of English as a foreign language and Greek as a mother tongue. This research probes into the teaching of English in Greek state schools and more specifically the teaching of English, as a foreign language, in the first year of junior high school. The research attempts to evaluate the authors’ choices of visual iconic messages that promote the Greek culture and language, the students’ mother tongue, as a means of mediation—mostly through interlingual translation—to familiarize them with the target language and culture, namely, the English language and culture. The fact that the visual iconic and verbal signs under scrutiny are all derived from a textbook published by the Greek Ministry of Education, Research and Religious Affairs gives more significance to the specific signs (thus legitimizing them).

Global meets local: typographic practices and the semiotic role of subtitling in the creation of parodies in Cypriot dialect on Internet texts

The framework which governs subtitles and viewers’ comments is investigated in this study, through five film clips-parodies of the same movie, which are subtitled in the Cypriot dialect with different linguistic content every time. The study focuses on the semiotic role of subtitling and the examination of text content and meaning. Also, subtitle characteristics and typographic practices for the transcription of subtitles into a language system which lacks an official and widely accepted orthographic system are examined. As for the visual rendering of the Cypriot dialect in subtitling, the study proposes that the use of typography by fansubbers, facilitated by technology proliferation, often results in failure of legibility, cohesion and comprehension of the text, while projecting a sense of orality and improvisation. The main concluding remark is that subtitling is used as a semiotic tool in visual communication as it operates as a “semiotic switch” in the expected production of semiosis by the language of the text and the production of semiosis by the subtitles.

Semiotic Landscapes in Commercial Communication: A Preliminary Reading of Greek-Cypriot Shop Signs

Theanalysisofasampleofcharacteristiccommercialshopsignsintoday’sLimassol, Cyprus,assertstheiranchoragefunctionassyncretic/polysemiotictextsrelyingupon the synergy of semiotic systems, in their commercial and broader informational function. The study of intersemiosis, i.e. of the translation between pictorial and linguisticsemioticsystemsandtheirhierarchy,canprovidethebasisforanin-depth semioticstudyofthesocio-economicandhistorical-aestheticlandscapeofthecity. Thisstudyoffersapreliminarymethodologicalseparationofsignsystemsontheshop signsinLimassol,showingupthewaysintersemiosisremainsthestandardhistorical communicationmethodofshopsignssincetheadventofmasscommerce. KeywoRdS Graphic Design, Intersemiosis, Semiotic Landscape, Shop-Signs, Translation

Polysemiotic Signs in Foreign Language Course Books

Abstract Recently, in most foreign language course books, rubrics of units, activities, and exercises are codified resulting in a peculiar coexistence of semiotic systems to produce or to accentuate meaning, creating thus polysemiotic signs. In this paper, I study the polysemiotic signs of English and French in foreign language course books published in Greece which are composed of verbal and visual signs within the context of Groupe M. Such a relation of semiotic systems also includes intersemiotic and interlingual translation. My main result is that course books are characterized by an increasing visuality that permits reference to a common cultural framework or semiosphere that enables the polysemiotic signs used in course books to be understood by students learning a foreign language.