Interlinguistic translation is when a text is translated from one language to another, in other words when we have ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of some other language’ (which is translation proper).
Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is when we have ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal systems’, for example, when a novel is ‘translated’ into a film, or a fairy tale into a ballet. Jakobson did not quote cases like Walt Disney’s Fantasia, where music is translated into images.
In order to define the three types of translation, Jakobson uses the word interpretation three times, and it could not be otherwise for a linguist who, while belonging to the structuralist tradition, was the first to discover the fecundity of Peircean concepts. However, his definition of the three types of translation leaves us with an ambiguity. The first way to read this classification is that there are three types of interpretation, and that in this sense translation is a species of the genus interpretation. This seems the most obvious solution, and the fact that Jakobson insisted on the term translation could have been due to the fact that he wrote down his reflections for a collection of essays devoted to the problem of translation, in which his aim was to distinguish between various types of translation, implicitly taking for granted that they were all forms of interpretation. But, on the grounds of Jakobson’s proposal, many people decided that he was suggesting that rewording, translation proper and transmutation were three types of translation:
rewordingTranslation translation proper
transmutation
Since, as we shall see, the category of rewording covers an immense variety of types of interpretation, at this point it would be easy to succumb to the temptation to identify the totality of semiosis with a continuous process of translation – in other words, to assert that every interpretation is a form of translation.
Such an idea has at times been supported by various hermeneutical philosophers. Heidegger, during a university course on Heraclitus in 1943, proclaimed the identity between translation and interpretation.2 Gadamer3 maintained on the one hand that ‘every translation is always an interpretation’, in the sense that a translation is made possible by a previous interpretation of a text – and this cannot be reasonably refuted – but on the other hand he tried to show the deep structural identity between the two, in the sense that translating is like performing a dialogue with Another One, and in every dialogue one tries to understand the point of view of the interlocutor.
Gadamer states that every translator is an interpreter, and I agree, but this does not mean that every interpreter is a translator. In another place he says that the task of the translator is not qualitatively different from the one of an interpreter, but differs only in the degree of intensity. Such a difference in degrees of intensity seems to me fundamental, and in the course of this chapter I shall distinguish those different degrees.
George Steiner4 says that
A ‘theory’ of translation, a ‘theory’ of semantic transfer, must mean one of two things. It is either an intentionally sharpened, hermeneutically oriented way of designating a working model of all meaningful exchanges, of the totality of semantic communication (including Jakobson’s intersemiotic translation or ‘transmutation’). Or it is a subsection of such a model with specific reference to interlingual exchanges, to the emission and reception of significant messages between different languages.
Steiner adds that ‘the “totalising” designation is the more instructive because it argues the fact that all procedures of expressive articulation and interpretative reception are translational, whether intra- or interlingually. The second usage – “translation involves two or more languages” – has the advantage of obviousness and common currency; but it is, I believe, damagingly restrictive.’
Steiner honestly admits that both the totalising and the traditionally specific theory can be used with systematic adequacy only if they relate to a given theory of language. One has to decide whether ‘a theory of translation is in fact a theory of language’ or whether ‘the theory of language is the whole of which the theory of translation is a part’. He says that ‘the preceding chapters have made my own preference clear’.
It is clear that my preferences are different, because my own theory of language is based upon Peirce’s notion of interpretation, a notion which is too large to be reduced to the one of translation.
Many forms of interpretation
According to Peirce an expression (be it linguistic or not) can be interpreted by a synonym, a definition, a paraphrase, a series of inferences or even by a series of encyclopaedic explanations. For instance, let us take the expression cocaine. It can be interpreted by a synonym, and as far as I know it is called coke, snow, and many other slang expressions. Cocaine can be interpreted by a definition, and I found in Webster’s ‘white crystalline alkaloid extracted from coca leaves’. But the same dictionary also provides an inference, when saying that this substance ‘can produce addiction’. If by chance someone didn’t understand all these interpretations, I could add some encyclopaedic details, such as, let us say, that some natives in Latin America used to chew those leaves, or that Sherlock Holmes took such a substance in a seven-per-cent solution.
Peirce said that the interpretant is something that teaches us something more about the interpreted sign. If I interpret cocaine as ‘crystalline alkaloid’ I know certain properties of cocaine that I probably did not know before. But this ‘more’ might be ‘less’ as far as the sense of a given discourse was concerned.
For instance, according to Peirce, the interpretant of a given expression can also be a behavioural or an emotional response (Peirce was speaking of an energetic interpretant). Now, suppose that I am following a play in a language I do not know well enough. When an actor utters something, I notice that the other people on stage (and probably also people in the audience) are laughing, so I infer that the actor said something funny. These laughs act as an interpretant of the first actor’s utterance, telling me that he told a joke; but they do not tell me what the joke was about.
Not only this, I cannot tell whether it was a witty quip or trivial wordplay. In my ignorance I do not understand why the other actors laugh. They may be laughing because they are so simple-minded as to appreciate a vulgar prankster, or so quick as to love the boldest of paradoxes. This Gedankenexperiment tells us that something can act as an interpretant of a given expression without being a translation of it – at least in the proper sense of the word.
Rewording is not translation
Jakobson spoke of translation also as rewording. Now let us suppose that the most elementary case of rewording, that is, definition, can be taken as a translation. Since in chapter 2 I quoted the scene where Hamlet kills Polonius, let me return to that text:
GERTRUDE What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me? Help, help, ho!
POLONIUS (Behind) What, ho! help, help, help!
HAMLET (Drawing) How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!
Makes a pass through the arras
POLONIUS (Behind) O, I am slain!
Falls and dies
If I look in Webster’s for correct definitions of the main terms used by Shakespeare I find:
Do – to make or cause, to perform or carry out
Murder – to kill unlawfully and with malice
Help – aid or assistance
Behind – on the side opposite to front
Draw – to pull out, to remove, to extract, as a cork, a tooth, a sword
Rat – any of several kinds of black, brown or grey, long-tailed rodents, resembling, but larger than, the mouse
Dead – no longer living
Ducat – any of various coins of silver formerly current in Europe
Arras – a tapestry
Slay – to kill by violence
Fall – to come down by the force of gravity
Die – to cease to live, to come to an end
Consequently the passage could be reworded as:
GERTRUDE What wilt thou make or cause, to perform or carry out? thou wilt not kill me unlawfully and with malice? Assistance, assistance, ho!
POLONIUS (on the side opposite to front) What, ho! Assistance! Assistance! Assistance!
HAMLET (pulling out, removing, extracting, as a cork, a tooth, a sword) How now! Any of several kinds of black, brown or grey, long-tailed rodents, resembling, but larger than, the mouse? No longer living, for a coin of silver, no longer living!
Makes a pass through the tapestry
POLONIUS (on the side opposite to front) O, I am killed by violence!
Comes down by the force of gravity and comes to an end
It’s a joke, I agree. But this joke has been made possible by having identified translation with interpretation through definition, that is, by having rigorously (mechanically) respected the (evidently absurd) principle that definition – insofar as it is a form of rewording – is a form of translation. It goes without saying that this text would not be a correct translation even if it were literally translated into another language.
Synonyms are a form of rewording. With the help of Roget’s Thesaurus I can rephrase our Shakespearean text, to obtain something that no publisher would pay for as a translation:
GERTRUDE What wilt thou cook? thou wilt not remove me from life? Do a favour, do a favour, ho!
POLONIUS (Back to back) What, ho! Do a favour, do a favour, do a favour!
HAMLET (Phlebotomising) How now! a bad person? Deceased, for a napoleon, deceased!
Makes a stab through the tapestry
POLONIUS (Back to back) O, I am put out of the way!
Descends and is burned
