TRANSLATION BEYOND

TRANSLATION STUDIES
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TRANSLATION
BEYOND
TRANSLATION
STUDIES
Kobus Marais
 BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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 CONTENTS

L ist of F igures  vii

L ist of T ables  viii
L ist of C ontributors  ix

Introduction: What Does It Mean to Translate? 1

Kobus Marais

Part I Translation in the Natural Sciences

1 Translating into and from Mathematics 17

Mihai Nadin

2 ‘Translating’ Geometric into Arithmetic Reasoning as a Case of Negentropic

Semiotic Work 33
Michael H. G. Hoffmann

3 The ‘carrying over’ and Entanglement of Practices in the Computer Science and
Translation Communities 39
David Vampola

4 Biology of Translation: The Role of Agents 63

Alexei A. Sharov

5 Translation in Medical Science and Biomedical Research 81

Steve Reid and Delva Shamley

PART II Translation in the Social Sciences

6 Interlingual, Intralingual and Intersemiotic Translation in Law 99

Agnieszka Doczekalska and Łucja Biel

7 Translation Approaches within Organization Studies 119

Susanne Tietze, Kaisa Koskinen and Rebecca Piekkari

PART III Translation in the Humanities

8 Literary Translation in Electronic Literature and Digital Humanities 143

Chris Tanasescu and Raluca Tanasescu

9 Translating Friendship Alternatively through Disciplines, Epochs and Cultures 165

Claus Emmeche
vi CONTENTS

10 Meaning-making Processes in Religious Translation Involving Sacred Space 197

Jacobus A. Naudé and Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé

11 Translation between Non-humans and Humans 219

Xany Jansen van Vuuren

12 Translation in Intermedial Studies 231

João Queiroz, Ana Paula Vitorio and Ana Luiza Fernandes

I ndex  246
 FIGURES

1.1 Geometric translation 18

1.2 The river, the island, the bridges 21

1.3 Geometriam situs means dealing with the meaning of positions 21

1.4 Graph theory and topology originate from a semiotic process 22

2.1 Determining the ratio of side and diagonal in a regular pentagon with the
method of mutual subtraction 35

4.1 Structure of a semiotic process 69

5.1 Schematic transitions from the ‘Bench to Bedside’ (T1) and ‘Bedside to
Practice’ (T2) translational medical research and development model 83

5.2 Operational challenges for translational research and medicine 83

5.3 The three-phase ‘contribution mapping’ model 89

5.4 The SPIRIT action framework 90

9.1 Schematic representation of TN, translation in the narrow sense 168

9.2 TN as interlingual translation as if realized through a purely linguistic

process that aims to preserve the meaning (i0) of a text (t0) translated
into another language (t1) so i0 = i1 169

9.3 Schematic representation of TS, alternative or semiotic translation 170

 TABLES

6.1 An example illustrating the translation of drafting instructions into a legal

provision 105

6.2 An example of simple double technique 108

6.3 An example of paragraphed double technique 108

6.4 Examples of legal signs in ASL 113

7.1 Borrowing from translation studies to organization studies: Three examples 131
 CONTRIBUTORS

Łucja Biel is Associate Professor and Head of EUMultiLingua research group in the
Institute of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Poland. She is an editor of the
Journal of Specialised Translation. She is also a sworn translator of English and Polish.
She holds an MA in Translation Studies (Jagiellonian University of Kraków, Poland), a
PhD in Linguistics (University of Gdańsk, Poland) and a Diploma in English and EU Law
(University of Cambridge, UK). She has published extensively on legal/EU translation,
legal terminology, translator-training and corpus linguistics.

Agnieszka Doczekalska is Assistant Professor at the Kozminski University’s Law School

(the Department of International and EU Law) in Warsaw, Poland. She holds a doctorate
in law from the European University Institute (Italy) and diplomas in translation from
the Centre for Modern Translation Studies (University of Łódź, Poland) and the Institut
de Traducteurs, d’Interprètes et de Relations Internationales (University of Strasbourg,
France). She has published papers on multicultural legal communication, legal
multilingualism, legal translation, comparative law and Japanese law.

Claus Emmeche is a philosopher of science, Associate Professor at the History and

Philosophy of Science group at the Department of Science Education, the University of
Copenhagen, Denmark, where he translates philosophy to science students. Together
with Jesper Hoffmeyer, he contributed to the field of biosemiotics. His research interests
include philosophy of interdisciplinarity, with friendship studies as a case.

Ana Luiza Fernandes is a researcher at the Literature, Culture and Contemporaneity

program of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro,
Brazil. Her research interests include intermedial art and literature, photobooks and
general semiotics. E-mail: [email protected]. Orcid: //orcid.org/0000-0003-
3598-2916.

Michael Hoffmann is Professor in the Philosophy Program at the School of Public

Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. His research focuses on the role
of diagrammatic representations for those cognitive processes that are involved in
learning, argument construction, problem solving, deliberation and conflict management.
Hoffmann combines technological and pedagogical innovations that are important to
foster the skills needed in these areas. He created the argument mapping tool ‘AGORA’
and the Reflect! Platform, which provides scripted user guidance for teams that try
to find consensus on wicked problems. Hoffmann is an expert in problem-based
learning, the semiotic and epistemological foundations of learning and in argumentation
theory.
x CONTRIBUTORS

Xany Jansen Van Vuuren is Lecturer in Interpreting at the University of the Free State,
South Africa, specializing in non-professional interpreting and translation, translation
and ecology, and ecosemiotics. She obtained her BA at Rhodes University, and her MA
at the University of the Free State. She is currently in the process of completing her PhD
dissertation, ‘Non-Professional Interpreters in Animal Welfare: Towards an Ecosemiotic
Understanding of Interaction’.

Kaisa Koskinen is Full Professor of Translation Studies and Head of Languages at Tampere
University, Finland. Her current research interests include the changing landscapes of
translation in society, translatorial practices in different contexts as well as translation
and affect.

Kobus Marais is Professor of Translation Studies in the Department of Linguistics

and Language Practice of University of the Free State, South Africa. He published
two monographs, namely Translation Theory and Development Studies: A Complexity
Theory Approach (2014) and A (Bio)semiotic Theory of Translation: The Emergence of
Social-Cultural Reality (2018). His research interests are translation theory, complexity
thinking, semiotics/biosemiotics and development studies.

Mihai Nadin is Ashbel Smith University Professor at the University of Texas at Dallas,
USA, where he also directs the Institute for Research in Anticipatory Systems. He contributed
to electrical engineering, computer science, aesthetics, semiotics, computational design,
human-computer interaction, post-industrial society and anticipatory systems. He has
a post doctoral degree in computer science and in philosophy, logic and the theory of
science.

Jacobus A. Naudé and Cynthia L. Miller-Naudé are Senior Professors in the Department
of Hebrew at the University of the Free State, South Africa. Their research focuses on
pre-modern Hebrew linguistics, religious translation and Bible translation (both ancient
and modern) from a complexity theoretical viewpoint.

Rebecca Piekkari is Marcus Wallenberg Professor of International Business at Aalto

University, School of Business in Finland. Her work focuses on the management of
multinational corporations, diversity and inclusion as well as qualitative research methods.
She is Fellow of the Academy of International Business and the European International
Business Academy.

João Queiroz is Professor at the Institute of Arts and Design, Federal University of Juiz
de Fora, Brazil, where he coordinates the Iconicity Research Group – IRG (//iconicity-
group.org/). He has been teaching courses on cognitive semiotics, Peirce’s philosophy,
intermediality studies, and supervised PhD and master’s students in the fields of semiotics,
art & technology and cognitive semiotics. Personal homepage: //semiotics.pro.br. Email:
[email protected]. Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6978-4446.

Steve Reid (MBChB, MFamMed, PhD) is a family physician based at UCT with a
background in rural medicine, and an advocate for rural health in South Africa. As such he
is involved in health sciences education and human resources for health, with a vision to
CONTRIBUTORS xi

support medical and health science graduates to become more relevant and appropriately
skilled in Africa. He is also involved in developing the role of the arts and social sciences
in health care through the Medical Humanities within the African context.

Delva Shamley is Head of the Division of Clinical Anatomy and Biological Anthropology
at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has a track record of postgraduate
student supervision to PhD level, publications and grant success. External consultancies
include peer reviewing for journals, grant reviewing for the HTA (UK), NRF (SA),
AREF, Flanders Foundation (Belgium) and EDCTP (EU). Her research programme
in breast cancer (REACH) reflects her commitment to the translation of evidence to
practice.

Alexei Sharov graduated from Moscow State University (MSU, Russia), where he
received an MS (1980) and a PhD (1988) in entomology and ecology. He has worked as a
research scientist at MSU, West Virginia University, Virginia Tech, USA, and the National
Institute on Aging (Baltimore, USA). Currently he works as a consultant in Elixirgen
company, is editor in chief of the journal Biosemiotics and editor of the Biosemiotics
book series (Springer). His interests include theoretical biology, biosemiotics, origin
and evolution of life. He has more than 170 scientific publications, including books
Habitability of the Universe Before Earth (2017) and Semiotic Agency: Science Beyond
Mechanisms (2021).

Chris Tanasescu is a poet and computer scientist. His cross-disciplinary research into
world literature, natural language processing, network analysis and performance studies
has resulted in widely cited academic publications, praised computationally assembled
anthologies and HCI-informed poetry collections and awarded intermedia performances.
His project #GraphPoem has been listed as ‘the institute performance’ at DHSI, Canada,
annually since 2019. He is the holder of the Altissia Chair in Digital Cultures and Ethics
at UC Louvain, Belgium, and served previously as Coordinator of Digital Humanities at
the University of Ottawa, Canada.

Raluca Tanasescu is Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of

Groningen, in the Netherlands. Her work builds on a PhD in Translation Studies from the
University of Ottawa’s School of Translation and Interpretation and on a deep interest in
minority, multilingualism and computational approaches to humanities scholarship. She
is the author of a doctoral thesis and several chapters and journal articles on refashioning
the discourse on translation from a complexity perspective.

Susanne Tietze, PhD, is Professor of Multilingual Management at Sheffield Hallam

University, UK. She has an interest in multilingual work organizations, their construction
through language and discourse, how power plays out through language use in context
and how language agents shape organizational practices. She is also particularly interested
in methodological issues relating to researching multilingual contexts and writing about
them. Her latest book, Language, Translation and Management Knowledge: A Research
Overview, was published in 2021 and concerns itself with management knowledge
generation from a language and translation perspective.
xii CONTRIBUTORS

David Vampola teaches in the Computer Science Department of SUNY-Oswego,

USA, where he is Founding Director of the Digital Humanities Program. His talks
and publications have focused on digital humanities, statistical analysis of professions,
computational models of social and cognitive phenomena, natural language processing,
and theories of disciplinary development.

Ana Paula Vitorio da Costa is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Linguistics

and Language Practice at the University of the Free State, South Africa, and has a PhD
in Literature, Culture, and Contemporaneity from the Pontifical Catholic University of
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her research interests include montage, transmediality, semiotics,
photobook, photography and visual arts. Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7028-8087.
 Introduction: What Does It
Mean to Translate?
KOBUS MARAIS

This volume has its origins in an email I received from Bloomsbury Publishing in May
2018. I was not able to help them with what they were suggesting, but in a return email,
I used the opportunity, on the spur of the moment, to suggest a concept that I had been
toying with for some time at that point:

Where I do see a gap is for a collected volume on ‘marginal’, ‘alternative’ voices in

translation studies. Such a collection could bring together voices from alternative
spaces, times, epistemologies, fields of study. It would challenge hegemonies in
the field and show how translation is used much wider than people in translation
studies think.

The agent at Bloomsbury was enthusiastic about such an endeavour and invited me to
submit a detailed proposal.
I initially suggested Alternative Translation as title, but through a process of thinking
and rethinking, we settled on Translation beyond Translation Studies, which, I think,
is much better than our first idea. What do I mean by translation beyond translation
studies? In 2016, Gambier and Van Doorslaer (2016) published an edited volume called
Border Crossings: Translation Studies and Other Disciplines. Their aim was to promote
interdisciplinary dialogue between translation studies and other fields of study – a
commendable aim in its own right. Border Crossings does inquire into practices broader
than interlingual translation, for instance, in the chapters on biosemiotics and game
localization. However, most of the chapters remain focused on interlingual translation and
its relation to other disciplines, or the role that other disciplines, such as computer science,
can play in interlingual translation. While there are, therefore, some overlaps between
this volume and Border Crossings, this volume has a markedly different focus, namely to
explore the nature of the practices that other fields of study conceptualize as translation.
Rather than asking how computer science could contribute to interlingual translation,
this volume is interested in the translation processes or practices in computer science
itself. Put simply, are there things that computational experts do that are not necessarily
called ’translation’, but that are translational, given a particular conceptualization of
translation? Furthermore, if a mathematician, in their practice of mathematics, uses the
word ’translate’ or ’translation’, what do they mean by that? In geometry, for instance,
2 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

the term ‘translation’ has no bearing on language whatsoever. It is a spatial operation

performed on geometric figures in space. Similarly, what would a biologist or a medical
specialist mean when they use the term ’translation’ in the practice of their domains?
This volume, in my view, thus, assumes at least three audiences. The first audience
would be scholars in the field of translation studies. They are the readers who might
ask, ‘But why do you do this? What do you want to achieve?’ These questions are
usually related to the interests of translation studies as a field of study, and they are
often accompanied by questions about diluting the field and stretching the metaphorical
use of the term ’translation’ beyond reason. Scholars in translation studies have put in
very hard work over the past century to establish translation studies as a field of study in
contrast to linguistics and comparative literary studies. I regard the philosophical question
about the grounds for and boundaries of translation studies as a fair question, so, in this
introduction, I provide my views on it.
The second audience would be disciplinary specialists, such as the mathematicians,
computer scientists, biologists, medical specialists, legal experts, organizational experts
and other fields in the humanities that are represented in the volume. They would be
interested in the volume to gain further insight into how semiosic processes play out in
their disciplines. This audience would probably have some interest already in the semiotics
of their respective fields, but the volume might also stimulate an increased involvement in
the semiosic processes that play out in their field.
I do, however, also foresee a third audience, which one could call a meta-disciplinary
or transdisciplinary audience, and I suggest that this audience might be the most important
one for the volume. One of the broader implications of this volume is that translation
does not only underlie interlingual communication between people from different
language communities but also that it underlies communication between people from
different communities of practice or different discursive communities – and it underlies
interspecies communication, as well as communication with machines. A conceptualization
of translation that is based in semiotics allows one to explain some commonalities that
underpin all social-cultural practice, including what scholars in the natural sciences, social
sciences and humanities do. This introduction, and the volume itself, is a translation that
allows scholars from different discursive communities to communicate with one another
by showing some of the semiotic commonalities underlying social practice as demonstrated
by the fact that at least seven of the chapters in this volume were written by scholars
who are not regarded as translation studies scholars. The authors in the volume have all
translated their disciplinary understanding of semiotic processes, which makes possible a
discussion of translation beyond translation studies. Their work in this volume is empirical
evidence of this growing communication across boundaries of all kinds, not only lingual.
Translation, as it is practiced by these scholars beyond translation studies, is an inter- or
even transdisciplinary practice that allows scholars from widely differing disciplines to
talk to one another. More importantly, it provides a meta-conceptualization, a sociology
or anthropology as it were, that could help explain how social-cultural phenomena,
such as science, values, goals and so on, emerge. The volume leverages the translational
practices from different fields of study to construct a theory of translation that transcends
disciplines, that moves beyond disciplines, also beyond the discipline of translation studies.
Let me also make it clear that this conceptualization of translation is not structuralist,
a position semiotics is often accused of. The introduction and chapters in the volume will
make it clear that we are dealing with historical material processes here, that the volume
is based in process ontology and an emergentist view of reality.
INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TRANSLATE? 3

I conceptualized this volume based on the lengthy, but not necessarily complete,
argument I made previously (Marais 2019), namely that translation studies conceptualizes
’translation’ mainly as a lingual activity. I did indicate that the field has seen efforts at
broader conceptualizations since the 1990s, but that much of the work on a broader
conceptualization takes place in other fields of study, such as media and communication,
education, arts, music and dance. In the 2019 volume, I proposed conceptualizing
translation from the perspective of semiotics, and this volume is a further exploration of
the implications of that proposal. If it is true that translation is work performed on semiotic
material (which includes, but is not limited to, lingual material), my conceptualization
suggests that different fields of study, or different domains of life, should engage in
different types of translation. These practices of translation might go under the name
’translation’, but they might also not, as my colleague Marlie van Rooyen (2019) found
with news translation. Journalists in multilingual countries such as South Africa do not see
themselves as translators, and they see themselves as writing news bulletins, not translating.
However, it is clear that they translate – interlingually speaking – and when prompted,
they agreed that they translate as part of their bulletin writing. Similarly, a composer who
uses a painting to compose music will not call it a translation or see herself as a translator.
What the journalist did and what the composer did are clearly two different things, but
they have at least one thing in common: They interpreted one (set of) signs and created
another set of signs based on that interpretation. In other words, they translated.
My aim is, therefore, to go beyond the deductive theoretical argument I made in 2019,
to add data, that is, social practices, with which to make an inductive argument about the
meaning of the term ’translate’.1 Making this argument has two implications. On the one
hand, it supports the deductive argument that I made, based on Peirce’s highly abstract
conceptualization of semiotics and translation, and on the other hand, it provides data
that shows that, even in everyday reality, as much as in other fields of study, translation
is, indeed, not only a lingual operation. Put differently, I would like to see what people in
different (scholarly) domains do when they ’translate’ or how they conceptualize the term
’translation’ in their respective domains. The focus is, therefore, on practice and action in
the working lives of people in different (scholarly) domains. As a way in, I asked scholars
from different fields to think and write about what people in that field mean when they
use the term ’translate’ or ’translation’.
As an aside, my initial thinking, that different spaces and times, that is, people and
practices from different cultures and societies, would be relevant to a study like this did
not draw as much attention as I had expected. This might have been due to a bias in the
call, but it might also mean that the idea of ’alternative’ forms of translation is either
overrated/overexplored or underrated/underexplored. What I mean is that Tymoczko’s
(2007) work on de-Westernizing translation studies has led to research on unique
translational practices in different cultures. It is not clear to me at this point in time
whether this search for alternative practices, as instanced by the words used to refer to
translation, has been overexplored or whether it remains underexplored. The volume,
however, does showcase alternative forms of translation space and time in the chapter on
the translation of sacred space, by Naudé and Miller-Naudé, and the chapter on animal
welfare interpreting by Jansen van Vuuren – and perhaps also in the chapter on friendship
by Emmeche. These chapters show that there are, even in the humanities, areas beyond
translation studies that have not been explored.
My interest with this volume is, therefore, to explore further what it means to translate.
First, there are questions about practice. What do living organisms of different species
4 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

do when they translate? What do human animals in different domains of life or different
fields of study do when they translate? Then there are also questions of conceptualization.
Why is translation the word they choose to express the thing that they do? If they do
not use the term ’translation’, are there practices in that field that could be considered
as translational? How do they think about translating, and how do they think about
the relationship between what they call translation and what other fields of study call
translation? What, if anything, do all of these practices have in common?
In the English language, in which I write here, the word ’translation’ is mostly used
to refer to a process of expressing in one language that which was uttered in another
language. In order to start the argument, I randomly chose my unabridged Collins English
Dictionary (Anon. 2006) to have a look at the semantic domains of ’translate’. As expected,
the Collins, first, refers to the process of interlingual translation. However, it then goes
on to list twelve more semantic domains in which the verb ’translate’ is used. The second
domain is merely ’to act as translator’, but from the third domain onwards, it becomes
really interesting. The third possible semantic domain is listed as ’to express or explain
in simple or less technical language’. Now, this domain still assumes language as the
’stuff’ that is translated, but it already assumes something more, that is, cognitive work to
understand and explain. The fifth domain is to ’transform’ or ’convert’. This domain does
not include language and could be any transformation or conversion. In particular, the
dictionary lists this use in the domain of biochemistry, that is, the transformation of the
molecular structure of messenger RNA into a polypeptide chain. Again, this translation
has no bearing on language, and yet it has a very strong reference to information. This
translation process, the dictionary makes clear, entails a transformation of the genetic
information in the DNA, so that it becomes functional in the metabolism of the cell.
A seventh semantic domain refers to space, that is, ’to move or carry from one place
or position to another’. In this domain, language is, again, not included as a necessary
requirement. Anything that can be moved or carried from one position to another can
be translated. Think here of multinational corporations translating their values into the
value system of another country (space), or, as is clear from the chapter on translation in
law in this volume, principles of law that need to be translated into various contexts. In
the parlance of traditional translation studies, this would be forms of indigenization and
localization.
Domains eight, nine, ten and thirteen all refer to the use of the term ‘translation’
in religious contexts, for example, to transfer a cleric from one office to another, to
transfer from one resting place to another, to transfer someone from one resting place to
another and to bring to a state of ecstasy. Domains eleven and twelve refer to the use of
translation in mathematics, that is, to ’move (a figure of body) laterally, without rotation,
dilation, or angular displacement’, and aviation engineering, ’to fly or move from one
position to another’.
I have left out domain four, namely ‘to interpret or infer the significance of (gestures,
symbols, etc.)’. In this domain, language is, again, not a requirement, though the ability to
interpret (non-linguistic) information and infer its significance is required. This is clearly
a semiotic conceptualization of translation that underlies all the other uses of the term,
but I shall return to this argument in a moment.
The first point that I would like to make from this discussion of semantic domains
of translation in the dictionary is just that there is evidence, in the English language in
general, of uses of the term ‘translation’ in different domains. The second point is that
there is evidence, in the English language in general, of the term ‘translation’ being used
INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TRANSLATE? 5

in domains and in ways that do not refer to or presuppose language. In itself, these
two points still do not make an argument for translation beyond translation studies, but
they do help situate the argument in the history of the use of the English language. In
the English language, in general, the dictionary provides evidence of a history of using
the term ‘translate’ for a number of non-lingual practices – and note that the dictionary
does not mark these as metaphorical uses. I argue elsewhere that, due to processes of
colonization and globalization, the semantics of the terminology used for translation
in other languages does not seem to differ much from that used in English, obviously
with some exceptions (Marais 2021). However, the task for translation studies, to decide
how it will use the term ‘translation’, cannot be based in the popular use of the term,
or even in how other disciplines use it. Defining the term ‘translation’ is the task of
translation studies in which it needs to consider a conceptual perspective from which to
study the process of translation. In other words, what do we need to observe to decide
that something is translation and to study it as such?
Therefore, also recall politicians who promise to translate their policies into better
living conditions for the people, businesspeople who plan to translate their new strategic
vision into more profit for their shareholders and the soccer team captain who declares
that, in the second half, the team should translate its scoring opportunities into points.
Then, also recall the plethora of trans- and inter- terms in a variety of fields of study
(Marais 2019: 3–4). I am referring here to words such as ‘interart’, ‘transfiction’,
‘intersemiotic’ and ‘transmedia’, but also to terms that do not include the trans- or
inter-, such as ‘resemiotization’, ‘tradaptation’ and ‘remediation’. While not denying the
difference between them, I would like to know what, if anything, all of these examples,
from the dictionary onwards, have in common, and how, if at all, they help us understand
the term ’translation’? Put differently, what are the family resemblances between the
practices designated by the term ‘translate’ (Tymoczko 2007)?
In traditional translation studies, the interlingual translation between two languages
is regarded as ‘translation proper’. The field does provide for two other ‘types’ of
translation, namely intralingual and intersemiotic translation, but many of the semantic
domains and examples I provided above are usually regarded as ‘metaphoric’ uses of the
term ‘translation’. The argument is that these metaphorical uses of translation are not
really translations. Rather, people just use the term in a metaphorical way to express some
kind of change.
I have argued elsewhere (Marais 2019) that this distinction between the ‘proper’ and
‘metaphorical’ use of the term ‘translation’ cannot hold in translation studies. If one
started off with a semiotic conceptualization of translation, it means, according to Peirce,
that the meaning of any (system of) sign(s) is its translation into any other (system of)
sign(s). Pattee (2001; 2007) presents a strong argument that this translational ability has
its foundations in the very basic epistemic cut that arose with life. What he means is that
the moment an organism is able to observe, the observation and the thing observed are of
two different orders. Elsewhere, I argued that translation, or the epistemic cut à la Pattee,
starts with the membrane, that is, the basic binary distinction between self and not-self.
This conceptualization assumes and makes clear that meaning is not a substance or a
form or a thing. Rather, meaning emerges in processes of creating relations. Meaning ‘is’
translating. Meaning ‘is’ creating relations between signs, whether new or conventional.
This would mean that ‘translation’ or ‘to translate’ is a term that applies to all processes
that, in some way or another, involve meaning-making and meaning-taking. Meaning is
made by translating signs into other signs. Meaning is interpreted by translating signs into
6 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

signs. What I propose, therefore, is that all of the meaning-making processes discussed
above do, indeed, have a translational aspect to them, in that they involve a process
of turning signs into other signs. This process of ‘turning signs into other signs’ is the
family resemblance that all semiotic processes share – and is the perspective from which
translation studies considers all of reality. Wherever a sign is turned into another sign, a
translation process can be identified and studied, no matter the domain or discipline in
which this happens.
But what is meaning?, you could ask. What are we after when we translate? Meaning
is taking one thing to stand for something else. Meaning is extended and embodied
cognitive work, done to infer the relevance or significance or consequences of any
observed or conceived phenomenon for the interpreter. Meaning relates to inferring
what the implications or significance of anything is for the interests of the interpreter;
that is, as Pattee said, it starts with the basic epistemic cut assumed by observation. If
I observe a lion, the meaning of this lion is an array of significances that I could infer from
its presence. I could, for instance, infer danger to my life (if I saw it in the wild), or I could
infer a sociocultural set of practices of keeping lions in captivity (if I saw it in a zoo). In
addition, I could also infer the significance of non-material phenomena, like my dreams
or my ideas. If I act on my ideas about democracy, for instance, would it be good for me
and the people around me, or not? I explained elsewhere how significance is related to
the interest of the organism and, therefore, always normative, and how this significance
can grow in complexity, from a choice to eat or being eaten, to a large and complicated
cognitive system like ‘the law’ (Marais 2019).
So, when someone asks me what the lion means, I can explain what it means to me
or I could imagine and explain what it would mean to this or any other person; that
is, what I inferred from it in a particular context, by constraining the material in my
environment that would create another sign for the person who asked me. I constrain the
material in my environment when I speak by constraining the airflow through my throat,
by controlling my vocal cords, my tongue, my lips, etc. in order to create sound patterns
that would travel through the air, cause a disturbance in the hearing mechanisms of the
person who asked the question, be transformed into electrochemical impulses in her brain
that would cause her to translate my signs into ideational signs in her mind. Should she
want to respond, she needs to materialize her ideas, perhaps in writing this time, where
she takes an instrument that causes a difference against a background (black ink against a
white page), which then causes a disturbance on my visual apparatus, etc. ad infinitum. In
other words, my thoughts are translations of previous thoughts, but my communication
of these thoughts is also a translation, namely turning the thoughts into sound waves or
patterns of ink on paper.
The conceptualization above means that any and all processes in which meaning is
created or interpreted entail a translational aspect. I need to be clear here. The implication
of this conceptualization is not that everything is translation. This would indeed be wrong,
because it would be an extreme case of reductionism. Rather, what I think the implication
of this line of thinking is, is that all meaning-making processes entail a translational
aspect, in other words, signs being explained by other signs. This means that when the
mathematician writes an equation (or any other mathematical text) based on the story
that John had two apples and Peter had two apples and Suzy had two apples, and that
they wanted to know how much money they would make if they pooled their apples and
sold them at five rand apiece, the writing of the equation entails a process of translation.
I am not claiming that it ‘is’ a process of translation or that it is a translation. It is, also and
INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TRANSLATE? 7

perhaps foremost, mathematics, but what happened is that the verbal narrative in some
way became the equation or became represented by the equation or became subsumed in
the equation. The process through which this happened is a translational process, that is,
turning a system of signs into another system of signs.
So, then, what is translation, or what does it mean to translate? In my view, translation
is work performed on semiotic material in order to constrain the material to a particular
difference that makes a particular difference (Bateson 2002; Marais 2019). Perhaps the
‘particular’ in the previous sentence is too strong. One translates to make as much of
a particular difference as one wants to, or as one is able to. In other words, the nature
of the constraints one imposes on the semiotic material depends on the intention of the
constrainer, and also on the affordances of the semiotic material, for example language,
film or a computer screen. Obviously, this difference needs to be interpreted, but this
interpretation is, again, done by performing work on the semiotic material at hand,
in order to constrain it to a particular difference that makes a particular difference.
Translation is, thus, processes of meaning-making and meaning-taking, and these
processes entail the imposition of constraints on the semiotic material. Any sign vehicle,
the representamen in Peircean terms, is mere potential. It does not have meaning, only
meaning-potential. It needs to be translated into another sign to be understood. This
translation process entails constraining the meaning-potential of the representamen
to an intended, limited range of possibilities. Note that Merrell (1997; 1998; 2003)
argued convincingly that the possibilities can never be limited to one possibility only,
but that is a story for another day. Let us look at an example, our lion from the example
above. A representamen, like the word ‘lion’ in a dictionary, has a plethora of meaning
possibilities – and potentially an unlimited number of meanings that can still be created.
However, if I see this word at the entrance to a zoo, many of the possibilities have been
eliminated by the context. If I then have to explain the meaning of lion to a three-year-
old who has never heard of or seen a lion, I will need to translate the word ‘lion’ into
something that is relevant both to the three-year-old and to the context of a zoo. I can,
for instance, translate the word ‘lion’ into ‘very large cat’, but I will also immediately add
that this very big cat is in a cage or a camp, so it is not dangerous to go and have a look
at it. What I have done throughout this process is to translate by imposing constraints
on existing semiotic material. Where are the constraints? Well, they are based on the
inferences that I make and materialized in the words that I then choose to use, as well
as the words I choose not to use. By saying ‘very large’ cat instead of ‘very dangerous’
cat, I constrain the meanings that I would like the three-year-old to infer. This does not
mean that she cannot infer something other than what I intended, but it does mean that
I tried my level best to guide her towards my intention. Translation is, therefore, work
that imposes constraints on semiotic material, based on the inferred significance of a
representamen in a particular context.
Some readers might object, and claim that translation is about creativity, not limiting
possibilities. I would agree, but when we start asking about creativity, we see that creativity
is the imposition of different constraints, not the absence of constraints. Nothing in
the universe emerges without some constraints operating on it, and this holds for the
semiosphere (Lotman 1990; 2005) or our social-cultural reality as well. Queiroz and his
research team have done a great deal of work to explain how new sets of constraints give
rise to creativity, and how intersemiotic translation triggers creativity through the work
of new sets of constraints (Aguiar et al. 2015; Ata and Queiroz 2016; Queiroz and Ata
2019; 2020).
8 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

The next question is, then, so, what is it that is translated? We know that matter
cannot be translated. You cannot translate colour pigment into sound waves, though you
can translate some meaning you inferred from the colour into sound. Deconstructionists
have also shown that, according to their logic, you cannot even translate certain words
into other words. So, what is it that gets translated? To answer this question, one has
to ask about interpretation. How do we form interpretants? We form interpretants by
inferring the relevance of the set of constraints that apply to the sign we are interpreting.
My conceptualization suggests that it is this set of constraints that applies to a particular
sign (system) that is translated. Let us try an example. What is the difference between a
sonnet and a short story? One could write a sonnet and a short story in which you used
exactly the same words and the same number of words in both. This means that the
material of which they are made, that is, printed words on a page, is exactly the same.
What does differ are the constraints that apply to the two genres. What does differ are
the relations between the signs that result from these constraints. I am talking here about
constraints in number of lines, number of verses, rhyme, rhythm, etc. This relatively
simple thought experiment should be sufficient to show that materiality will always
be one of the constraints imposed on signs, but it is not the material of the sign that
needs to be translated. Even the ‘meaning’ of a sonnet is not something, but a process of
interpreting sets of constraints. What is translated is the inferred relevant or significant
(set of) constraints.
Can these sets of constraints be copied? This question is sacrilege in traditional
translation studies, and rightly so, because we know that meaning is created, not
transferred. However, if you want to conceptualize a semiotic theory of translation, you
need to consider the wide variety of living organisms that partake in sign-making and sign-
taking action, and you need to think about the complex array of semiotic activities within
the human species. For instance, in geometry, the process of performing transformative
actions on geometrical figures would result in an exact copy of the incipient figure, just
in a different space. In biology, particular sets of constraints in plants, for instance, can
be extracted from DNA and imported into other plants, which then show the same
characteristics as the incipient plant, for example, resistance to pathogens. So, in a
broadened conceptualization, copies seem to be possible. In by far the greatest number
of cases, however, copies are not possible. This seems to imply a conceptualization of
translation that argues that the overwhelming majority of translations entail change, but
that not all translations entail equal amounts of change. So, when a bacterium senses
the difference in sugar gradient in a solution and swims towards the higher gradient,
this ‘interpretation’ is much more of a ‘proto-interpretation’ compared to when scholar
A tries to make an argument about the relevance of scholar B for their field of study.
As Eco (1979) says, the litmus test for semiosis is lying. If something can deceive, it is a
sign. If something can be misinterpreted, it is a sign, but that does not mean that all sign
processes are equally complex.
The argument in the previous paragraphs does, however, warrant clarification. I would
claim that, in some instances, reference can be copied, like the geometric one above.
However, significance, I suggest, cannot be copied, because, with significance, you are
in the domain of pragmatics, and pragmatically speaking, no two sign events can be
the same, that is, one a copy of the other. Let me explain. Following Deacon (2013),
I conceptualize reference as aboutness. One physical system can reference another, can be
about another, in the sense that the differences between two systems could be the effect
of work that was done. In this sense, the one system is about the other. For instance, the
INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TRANSLATE? 9

difference in temperature between water in the bath and the air in the bathroom refers
to or is about the work that was done to heat the water. So, purely physical systems refer
to or are about other systems. Significance, however, is the relevance of this reference,
that is, the relevance of difference, for a living organism. While the two triangles in
geometric translation have the same reference, they do not have the same significance. In
a mathematical argument, they do not play the same role. One is the original, the other
the translated. Because of the second law of thermodynamics, and the resultant arrow
of time, no two semiotic events can be copies of one another, pragmatically speaking, it
seems. The complexity of the relationship between incipient and subsequent sign systems
in the translation process is based on the argument that some, but not all, constraints
can be replicated. Furthermore, some constraints can be replicated fully, though most
constraints cannot. This leaves us with translation as a complex process of interpreting
constraints, selecting constraints, re-forming constraints, adapting under the influence
of constraints, considering new constraints and then, under the influence of relevance,
imposing a particular set of constraints on the available semiotic material in order to
constrain the next phase in the never-ending process of translation.
Can significance be translated? Yes – and no. A warning shout in Afrikaans can be
translated into a warning shout in IsiZulu. So, the pragmatic constraints can be translated,
and pragmatically, the interpreters of both shouts would be able to turn on their heels and
run away. Does this mean that both interpreters created exactly the same meaning? No,
but it does mean that there was pragmatically enough similarity to elicit a pragmatically
relevant response. It seems that we need a complexity approach to translatability, one
that can account for different types of translations at different levels of complexity. The
chapters in this book provide ample evidence of these differences.
Conceptually, I hope to have presented a framework that allows one to study
translational phenomena wherever and whenever they occur. The chapters that follow
provide arguments and data from at least eleven different fields of study or disciplines.
These chapters explain the ways in which the term ‘translation’ is used in those fields,
and consider what use in that field contributes to a broader understanding of translation.
The implication of these chapters is a, hopefully growing, third audience, to which
I referred above, looking to study reality from a transdisciplinary perspective, looking for
communication between communities of practice and discursive communities, looking to
study both difference and similarity.
The first chapter on mathematics demonstrates how mathematics, first, entails a
process of translating real-life narratives or observations into the formal language of
mathematics. This is a process of translation because mathematics is the formalization of
non-formal interpretants. In other words, each mathematical equation or formulation is
based on an incipient system of signs that was not mathematical in itself. Nadin does not
address the problem of translating mathematical language back into natural language or
even practice, for example for engineers, but it is implied as a translational problem. The
chapter then discusses a second translational movement in mathematics, which actually
links strongly with the next chapter on computer science. Nadin argues that what he calls
‘ontology engineering’ is a next step in the translation process, in that mathematical
equations and even real-life narratives have to be translated into the formal language
upon which computers operate.
In his brief chapter on translating between geometry and arithmetic, Hoffmann
shows how translation is practiced within mathematics, between two branches of
mathematics. His data illustrates how this kind of translation process contributes to a
10 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

clearer understanding of the problem at hand, but even more important, leads to the
emergence of new ‘cultural forms’, in this case, new proofs in mathematics. In this
sense, his work supports the idea of translation as negentropic semiotic work, and it also
provides evidence of the value of communication between different semiotic systems, that
is, interdisciplinarity.
In his chapter on translation in computer science, Vampola regards the dialogue
between translation studies and computer science as itself a translational process,
and he points to the inter- and transdisciplinary implications of this volume. He then
lists a number of ways in which computer science can expand translation practice,
for example, through trans-organism translation between different earthly organisms,
and also through trans-organism translation to facilitate communication with aliens.
He adds trans-organic translation, namely understanding viruses, which is particularly
relevant as we find ourselves in the Covid-19 pandemic as this volume goes to press.
Vampola also suggests trans-humanism and what he calls ‘transmission’ translation
that generates human-machine assemblages and the communication between them.
He also discusses transduction, or the generation of electrical impulses that allows
communication between machines and their environments. He closes by referring to
transformation, or issues of visualization of information and other interpretive acts,
as well as trans-science translation that considers the role of expertise in decision-
making processes. All of the categories that Vampola suggests take translation beyond
translation studies’ ideas about ‘translation proper’. To be sure, he does not deny the
possibility of translation proper, but he shows us translational practices far removed
from or beyond translation proper.
The chapter on translation in biology expands the notion of translation both ‘upwards’
and ‘downwards’. Upwards, it shows that the sustainability of any ecology requires
translation processes, whether that ecology includes humans or not. Sharov’s ideas
link up with Cronin’s (2017) notions about a tradosphere that allows one to look at
translation processes in large ecologies. Downwards, the chapter on biology shows that,
at the levels of molecule, cell and organism, a wide variety of processes, which could be
called translational, are at play. The data in this chapter makes it clear that translation is
not interlingual only. In fact, interlingual translation is but a small part of translation. The
more the sciences (natural, social and human) move away from a mechanistic, atomistic
and substantive worldview, the more they will need a conceptualization of translation to
explain the emergence of organisms, ecologies, societies and cultures.
The chapter also raises the question whether a ‘unified’ translation studies is possible.
Do we have to live with the fact that different fields use the term in somewhat different
ways, or do we need to work towards conceptualizing what all of these uses have in
common, without denying or diminishing the differences between them?
In the introductory section to their chapter on biomedicine, Reid and Shamley already
expand the notion of interlingual translation when they talk about knowledge that has to
be translated into practice in a context foreign to where the knowledge originated. Not
only are they right in calling this kind of practice a translation of scientific knowledge but
they are also right in their hunch that various aspects of knowledge entail translational
activity. This translation is clearly not a metaphor but a reworking of knowledge to be
significant in the context. They conclude:

All of these issues can be regarded as failures of ‘translation’, in that while effective
remedies may exist in the form of drugs or treatments, they are surprisingly frequently
not found to be effective in the complex realities of people’s lives.
INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TRANSLATE? 11

The authors also clearly point out the complexity of the translation process, whereby
findings under controlled experimental conditions cannot be replicated in real
populations, because the experiment tested form-limited variables and reality seems to
present more variables than the tests provided for. In addition, they delve into the political
implications of biomedical translation, where healthcare workers at grassroots level are
often the translators of policy through the way in which they take decisions. Lastly, their
insight into the requirement of ‘back translation’ in biomedical research raises interesting
questions about entropy and negentropy.
While the authors in the chapter on translation in law focus on inter- and intralingual
translation, they acknowledge and briefly explore the role of intersemiotic translation
in this domain. The data on interlingual translation clearly shows the same kind of
borrowing taking place in law, through translation, as can be seen in cultural growth.
Legal experts acknowledge that borrowing law cannot be as simple as the term ‘legal
transplant’ suggests, leading them to talk about legal translation to indicate the way
in which legal concepts are adapted and incorporated in legal systems where they did
not originate. The discussion by Biel and Doczekalska on multilingual drafting and its
negative view of translation supports the argument that the nature of the translation
process, though always following the same underlying pattern of a sign being interpreted
through another sign, is determined by the social power that constrains them.
The authors bring to the table another interesting translational phenomenon when they
discuss intralingual translation in law. They refer to the difference between the language
in which laws are written and the language in which commentary about law is written.
These two sets of language use are translations of one another. They also show how laws
are translations of policies and how the law grows through translational processes. They
show legal drafting, the harmonization of law, legal transposition and the application of
law as forms of translation that occur in the legal domain, but which are ordinarily not
studied as ‘translation’ in translation studies.
While the reference to the monolingual English character of organization studies by
Tietze, Piekkari and Koskinen is relevant, this chapter on translation in organizational
studies contributes valuable insight into the point that translation can never be purely
interlingual. Its findings are supported by work such as that by Footitt (2017) in
development studies, which points out the illogical action of working transnationally
without any regard for differences in natural language. Translation studies will need to
acquire the ability to study practice and organization and structure in terms of semiotic
work in order to understand that culture/society is a woven web of not only discourses
and languages but also practices and institutions and structures, which are all semiotic
phenomena. To be blunt, what this chapter suggests is that organization, politics, sport,
the economy, agriculture, etc. all entail a translational aspect, the creation of meaningful
interpretants, that should be studied in translation studies. So, how does one, theoretically,
allow for the translation of values unless you reduce values to the language that names
the values?
In a chapter with strong links to the one on computer science, Tanasescu and Tanasescu
present a cogent argument that the materiality of the literature that is translated is
constitutive of the literature itself. In other words, the fact that literary texts in the digital
domain are no longer ‘different books’ means that the distinction between source and
target texts tends to disappear. The mere nature of the digital technology weakens the
difference between source and target texts because there are no longer ‘two books’, but
just a web of texts.
12 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Their argument that literature in the digital domain partakes in four translations,
namely translinguistic, transcoding, transmedial and transcreational, is also relevant to an
understanding of translation. It clearly implies that the medium in which the literature is
written forms part of the translation process. Literature is, thus, not merely disembodied
ideas travelling between cultures (when interlingually translated); instead, the meaning
of the ideas is irreducibly tied into the materiality of the medium in which the writing
takes place. They point out, furthermore, that the interactive nature of (much of) e-lit also
entails a translational aspect. The literature could be co-produced, which questions the
notion of the translator or author as the lone ranger who is an isolated genius.
Emmeche writes about the cultural notion of friendship. His grounding in Peircean
semiotics allows him to demonstrate clearly how practices, habits, action and perceptions
are subject to translation. Emmeche provides a large amount of empirical data to show how
translational processes work across cultures and across epochs, aiming for ‘a taxonomy
of Ts forms’. A particularly powerful example from this chapter is that Matteo Ricci, who
translated Aristotle’s work on friendship into Chinese, dressed himself as a Confucian
and not as a priest, in order to find acceptance in certain social circles. In other words, he
translated his appearance into another sign assemblage, which meant something different
and made him acceptable.
Naudé and Miller-Naudé suggest that a multimodal approach to religious translation
could unify religious studies. Their argument is that the different aspects of the domain
of the sacred should be seen as a complex, and held together by translations between
different semiotic systems. In a fascinating chapter, they explain how the experience of
something sacred is itself a translational process. Equally, sacred spaces are translations
of conceptualizations of the sacred. For instance, the architecture of sacred buildings
is a translation into space of the cosmogony of that religion. Naudé and Miller-Naudé
supplement their argument with data from both Ancient Israel and First-Nation South
Africa. They discuss both the sacred spaces as represented in the Hebrew Bible and the
rock paintings of the Eland San. They show how multimodal translation could provide
insight into the conceptual world of extinct oralate cultures. In summary, they show us a
world perfused with acts of translation.
Jansen van Vuuren considers translation between human and non-human animals. In
order to make this argument, she considers the conditions for communication between
species. For a biosemiotic argument about translation, one needs to have a theory of
translation that is not limited to language, and which leads one to a semiotic theory of
translation as the only solution. Her discussion of ecosemiotics and Umwelten clearly
takes translation studies into the realms of biology and ecology, making it clear that all
living organisms interact with their environment through semiotic processes. As indicated
earlier, these interactions are obviously not all at the same level, which actually strengthens
the argument that not all translational processes are exactly similar. Translations between
plants cannot be said to be similar in all respects to translations between animals, which
cannot be said to be similar in all respects to translations between humans.
Queiroz, Vitorio and Fernandes present an overview of the debates about translation
in intermediality studies. It is clear from their review of the literature that intermediality
studies does not limit their conceptualization of translation to inter- or intralingual
translation. Rather, they operate very clearly within a paradigm of thought that assumes,
correctly in my view, that all communication shares in multiple media and multiple
modalities. While some of the approaches seem to be irreconcilable, which would not
be an abnormal state of affairs in any field of study, scholars in intermedia studies show
INTRODUCTION: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO TRANSLATE? 13

a commitment to media and modes. One of the problems that is represented in the
discussion could be the difficulty of clearly talking about different modes and media,
and what one’s point of entry should be (if there should be only one?). This field, which
shares an interest with traditional translation studies in novels, narratives, subtitles and
so on, has moved much further than traditional translation studies in understanding that
all meaning-making and meaning-taking entail multiple media/modes, even though the
distinction between medium and mode is still debated.
This chapter on intermediality closes not only the section on translation beyond
translation studies in the humanities but also the volume on a note that signals the
beginning of an investigative trajectory, rather than a note that signals reaching a destiny.
For the authors in this volume, I suggest, the trajectory they started here leads to a future
in which the concept of ‘translation’ is studied in widely different fields and domains,
across disciplinary boundaries, thereby creating new ways of conceptualizing meaning as
an emergent phenomenon – wherever it occurs.

NOTE
1. I chose ‘translate’ rather than ‘translation’ because of my focus on process, but one could
just as readily perform the same exercise on ‘translation’. I also chose only one dictionary
entry for the sake of not extending the argument too much.

REFERENCES
Aguiar, D., P. Ata and J. Queiroz (2015), ‘Intersemiotic Translation and Transformational
Creativity’, Punctum, 1 (2): 11–21.
Ata, P. and J. Queiroz (2016), ‘Multilevel Poetry Translation as a Problem-solving Task’,
Cognitive Semiotics, 9 (2): 139–47.
Bateson, G. (2002), Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Cresskill: Hampton Press.
Collins English Dictionary (2006), Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers.
Cronin, M. (2017), Eco-translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene,
New York: Routledge.
Deacon, T. W. (2013), Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, New York:
W. W. Norton and Company.
Eco, U. (1979), A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Footitt, H. (2017), ‘International Aid and Development: Hearing Multilingualism, Learning
from Intercultural Encounters in the History of OxfamGB’, Language and Intercultural
Communication, 17 (4): 518–33.
Gambier, Y. and L. van Doorslaer (eds) (2016), Border Crossings: Translation Studies and Other
Disciplines, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Lotman, J. (2005), ‘On the Semiosphere’, Sign Systems Studies, 33 (1): 205–29.
Lotman, Y. M. (1990), Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
Marais, K. (2019), A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation: The Emergence of Social-Cultural
Reality, New York: Routledge.
Marais, K. (2021), ‘Eleven Different Names, One Practice: Questioning the Illusion of
Difference in Translation’, Target, 29 (3): 311–25.
Merrell, F. (1997), Peirce, Signs and Meaning, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
14 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Merrell, F. (1998), Sensing Semiosis: Toward the Possibility of Complementary Cultural

‘Logics’, New York: St Martin’s Press.
Merrell, F. (2003), Sensing Corporeally, London: University of Toronto Press.
Pattee, H. (2001), ‘The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut’, Biosystems, 60: 5–21.
Pattee, H. (2007), ‘The Necessity of Biosemiotics: Matter–Symbol Complementarity’, in
M. Barbieri (ed.), Introduction to Biosemiotics: The New Biological Synthesis, 115–32,
Dordrecht: Springer.
Queiroz, J. and P. Ata (2019), ‘Intersemiotic Translation as an Abductive Cognitive Artifact’,
in K. Marais and R. Meylaerts (eds), Complexity and Translation: Methodological
Considerations, 19–32, New York: Routledge.
Queiroz, J. and P. Ata (2020), ‘Intersemiotic Translation as a Creative Thinking Tool:
From Gertrude Stein to Dance’, in N. Salmose and L. Ellestrom (eds), Transmediations:
Communication across Media Borders, 186–215, New York: Routledge.
Tymoczko, M. (2007), Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators, Manchester: St Jerome
Publishing.
Van Rooyen, M. (2019), ‘Tracing the Translation of Community Radio News in South Africa:
An Actor-Network Approach’, PhD diss., University of the Free State, Bloemfontein.
 PART I

Translation in the
Natural Sciences
16
 CHAPTER ONE

Translating into and from

Mathematics
MIHAI NADIN

INTRODUCTION
For those who have to fill out income tax declarations, which are obviously different in
different countries, translation into mathematics is relatively straightforward: Your life,
represented by your work for which you are paid; your family, especially dependent
children; your car; and other expenses that the law considers justified become numbers
that will enter a ledger. Either you or an expert will make sure that your taxes, which
contribute to the common good, are correctly assessed. There is ambiguity in the language
of the law, and this is where translation in tax matters can become ‘creative’. This is
where the people translating your description in words into numbers and percentages
become interpreters. At the tax office, others will check the maths and either accept it or
adjust it. Converting life into mathematics goes well beyond paying taxes. It is everything
people do when translating goals – for example, investments, planning a trip, taking care
of their health – into numbers. Therefore, I present a first definition: Measurement is a
form of translation.
Dictionaries typically define mathematical translation as a problem of geometry.
A translation changes the position of all points by the same amount in a given direction:
T(x,y,z)=(x+a, y+b, z+c).
The formula that describes a translation in Euclidean geometry is visualized in
Figure 1.1. If your object is a table that you want to move, or a painting that you want
to hang on a different wall, you will end up solving a geometry translation problem.
This is a second definition: Translation is a specific geometric operation. A third possible
definition is mapping from algebraic representation to visual representation entails
translation.
With all this in mind, of course, including the point that visualization is a form of
translation, as increasingly used in contemporary science, the subject under discussion
is clearly more extensive than tax returns and geometry or visualizations. Mathesis
universalis – the ‘science of all sciences’, as Descartes and Leibniz understood it – is
supposed to ascertain truth and make invention possible. Ars inveniendi – the art of
invention – is an abridged form of this view. Charles Sanders Peirce (‘Mathematics is the
science that draws necessary conclusions’) established that ‘All science is either, A. Science
of Discovery; B. Science of Review; or C. Practical Science’ (1932, 1.181).1 Furthermore,
Peirce claims that Science of Discovery is either (a) Mathematics, (b) Philosophy or (c)
Idioscopy2 (1932, 1.183).
18 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

FIGURE 1.1 Geometric translation (AnteLab, reproduced with permission).

This brings me to the fourth definition: Translation is a mapping from one language
to another.
We will focus on mapping into mathematics and from mathematics. In certain cases,
intermediary translations will become necessary.
Mathematics is an abstract language (actually, many languages, which explains the
plural form) into which everything else, that is, the concreteness of life, can be translated.
The fact that we now also have a mathematics of machine translation, that is, how
mathematics can automate translations, only serves to suggest further that translation
itself proves to be a challenging mathematical problem. Of course, machines can translate
among languages in the European Parliament, but still fail to translate a four-line
poem – this is part of the challenge. Within mathematics itself, we are faced with yet
another challenge: Euclid’s elements, that is, the foundation of our understanding of
geometry, algebra and number theory, which are not, in the form we read them today,
a literal translation but an informed interpretation. Not unlike literature, translating
Homer or Shakespeare, or philosophy, translating Aristotle or Plato, the beginnings of
mathematics are translated into the more current idioms of the discipline.
Translating into mathematics is different from translating from mathematics, even for the
benefit of mathematicians. Markov (1913) tried to understand the phenomenon of language
TRANSLATING INTO AND FROM MATHEMATICS 19

in mathematical terms. His sample was the first 20,000 letters (identified by hand!) of
Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. Looking back (to 1913 – more than 100 years ago), we can easily
answer the question that everyone who dislikes mathematics has asked: What is it good for?
Markov’s analysis of the poet’s text is a precursor to what Google (Brin and Page 1998) and
other companies do: They automate the syntactic analysis (instead of counting word by word
or syllable by syllable, or have a scanner do it). Their samples are in the order of billions of
letters from all kinds of texts. Kolmogorov (1965) provided the probability aspect: We can
expect a certain letter or certain words after a given sequence. In other words, the translation
is automated based on the probability of the next letter in a word or the next word in a
sentence. This is how machines deal with translations (including those called ‘on-the-fly’, used
in current routine iPhone conversations between individuals using different languages). As we
shall see, ontology engineering is part of the effort. Wittgenstein was uncompromising about
the view that mathematics has no reference, and claiming that, ‘We need never appeal to the
meaning of the signs, that is, to their extra-mathematical application’ (1964). He was right in
respect of understanding what the language of mathematics provides. The Turing machine
(Turing 1937), for example, is a syntax engine, closed to meaning. Markov’s mathematics and
Kolmogorov’s probability theory adhere to the same view.
With these preliminary observations in mind, let us take note that the ‘language of
science’ – as mathematics is referred to – has changed to the extent of changing science
itself. The declarative (of philosophic arguments) has given way to the procedural
(of measurements resulting in data).
Science itself is changing, from being the expression of understanding what all kinds
of phenomena are to predicting the outcome of change, based on automated data
processing (Nadin 2018a). In other words, from knowledge (reflecting understanding) to
measurement (expressed as data). We still do not understand earthquakes or tornadoes,
but we try to predict them based on data acquired through various sensors. In some
ways, translation – in this case, translation of knowledge, which is always difficult – is
circumvented. This, in itself, is a subject that speaks for the need to broaden the discussion
on translation. That only particular aspects will be discussed in the following text can be
explained by the open-endedness of the subject.

TRANSLATING FROM NATURAL TO FORMAL

LANGUAGE (AND BACK)
In this section, I address the problem of translating between natural and formal languages.
Mathematics is, more than anything else, a collection of methods for abstracting properties
of observed reality and describing their relations. The many languages of mathematics
evolved as more and more descriptions of reality reached the level of abstraction at which
generality can be assumed or ascertained. Ambiguity, characteristic of natural language
and a source of its expressiveness, is eliminated. Some of these descriptions are by now
trivial for describing quantities, for example, using numbers and number operations
(addition, subtraction, etc.). Numbers are, of course, semiotic constructs, which can differ
in various cultures. Let me give another example, namely the use of geometric figures.
The constructs we call point, line, rectangle, circle, cube, sphere and so on are used to
describe spatial relations. Other mathematical descriptions are less intuitive. The integral,
with its familiar sign (∫), is nothing but a summa. It is the addition of those smaller,
multiple parts that make a whole, for instance, a surface or a volume, cut into pieces that
20 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

can be more easily measured. When someone asks, in what we call natural language, for
the area under a curve or for the length of a curve, the question is translated into the
language of integral calculus (part of mathematical analysis). Differential calculus, the
inverse of integral calculus, determines the rate at which change occurs. This can translate
questions from natural language, and could be as trivial as how fast a bacterial culture will
grow when some variables (e.g. temperature, feeding) vary. It could just as well apply to
preparing dough for bread or to developing antibacterial drugs. The result is translated
back into natural language and, for example, helps a farmer to calculate how many seeds
are needed for the area cultivated. It all boils down to the question, Why? In other words,
it boils down to the reason for use, whether practical, theoretic, poetic or whatever.
The abstract mathematical operation has practical consequences; for example, GPS-driven
machines (e.g. tractors) make automated farming possible. In some cases, the result of the
mathematical effort is of primary importance to the pragmatics of mathematics itself. Number
theory served the mathematics of encryption very well. The distinction between ‘pure’ and
‘applied’ mathematics captures this possibility. The mathematics used to describe physical
phenomena are by necessity the expression of the laws of physics, while the mathematics used
to describe mathematical methods are different in nature from that of physics or any other
applied domain. Mathematical poetics does not result in laws, but in particular observations
regarding rhythm, rhyme, metaphors and so on, characteristic of poetry.
This being said, it is important to realize that language itself can become (and actually
became!) a mathematical subject. It should come as no surprise that there are mathematics
of translation, examining the many dimensions of mapping from one language to
another. Our attempt to understand what language is, to gain knowledge about its origin,
to understand how it changes over time or how it affects thinking is often facilitated
by mathematics considered as transcending language. Mathematics has also turned its
attention to the many varieties of languages, from natural to artificial, and to what makes
a language better suited than others for specific activities.
With this in mind, translating from natural language to mathematics, and, evidently,
from mathematics back to language, appears to be an extremely rich subject. Semiotics
(Nadin 2017), dedicated to all there is in representation, via words, images, sounds,
symbols, electric signals and languages (natural and artificial), is useful for guiding the
inquiry into how different semiotic systems (e.g. languages, logics, aesthetic expressions,
technological instantiations) ultimately share in what Peirce defined as the open-ended
sign process: the semiosis (Nadin 2018b).
In what follows, we will exemplify that thought, but not before making clear that there
is a broader context within which to translate is to become part of the infinite semiosis,
often embodied in practical applications. A translation is, by necessity, an interpretation.
Here is a first example, namely a town (which happens to be Königsberg, not far from
St Petersburg) with seven bridges (Figure 1.2).
The question, described in natural language, is, Can someone walk over all the bridges
without crossing at least one bridge twice? The task is to devise a walk through the
city and its island, crossing the river around the island in such a way that each bridge
would be crossed only once. This is by now known as The Euler Problem (Euler 1736). It
interests us, here, as we examine the translation of language into mathematics, through
a distinction relevant to semiotics: In addition to that part of geometry that is concerned
with quantities, we have – first mentioned by Leibniz – a ‘geometriam situs’, a geometry
of position, for which language can be very expressive, but which might be lost in the
precise mathematical expression.
TRANSLATING INTO AND FROM MATHEMATICS 21

FIGURE 1.2 The river, the island, the bridges (AnteLab, reproduced with permission).

FIGURE 1.3 Geometriam situs means dealing with the meaning of positions (identified through
letters of the alphabet), that is, with a symbolic description of human actions in their living
environment. (AnteLab, reproduced with permission.)

Euler’s Path translates the question from language into an abstract representation. The
symbolism used (bridge names in lowercase, landmass names in uppercase) refers to the
meaning, bridge versus landmass, and the act of walking across bridges (see Figure 1.3).
This requires a narration: How does one get from a to g without repeating any path? Of
course, it can be generalized to anything that refers to bridges, such as thinking, delivering
goods or bridging between nations. Walking through the city becomes the experience
of a mental calculation (‘De calculositium’, as Leibniz called it) of the situs [situation].
22 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

FIGURE 1.4 Graph theory and topology originate from a semiotic process. (Stack Exchange
Network, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

This gives the translation from the original language the power of abstraction; that is, it
opens up many possible applications. Graph theory and topology, two distinct areas of
mathematics associated with numerical descriptions (quantity representations), originate
from a semiotic process as illustrated by Figure 1.4.
Semiotic adequacy, a subject rarely addressed, becomes a path towards establishing
graph theory and topology. Euler’s semiotic thought inspired successful quantitative
applications (such as those in complex networks science) for which language expression
would have been insufficient.
Relations among various elements in space (the city, a map of the city, a painting,
a building, etc.) are a matter of position semiotically described. This is an observation
that mathematicians, such as Poincaré, Klein, Riemann and others, eventually adopted.
We shall connect this thought (i.e. the analysis situs) to none other than Cassirer, who,
almost 200 years later, advanced a ‘philosophy of symbolic forms’ (1923) as part of his
encompassing Philosophy of Science, within which the animal symbolicum (the human
being, not animals) creates a universe of meanings. Yet again, as with Leibniz, Saussure
and Peirce, the symbol – Zwischenreich, that is, intermediate, mediated domain between
reality and the human subject – is part of a broader view and makes sense only within that
view. It points to meaning, not to measurements. Cassirer (1923: 341–5) realized that
the domain of meaning, our interpretations in natural language and those of quantitative
descriptions (such as mathematical representations) are complementary:

We make ‘inner fictions or symbols’ of outward objects, and these symbols are so
constituted that the necessary consequences of the images are always images of the
necessary consequences of the imaged objects.
(Cassirer 1955: 7)
TRANSLATING INTO AND FROM MATHEMATICS 23

Another example goes back to the time when a great deal of mathematical discoveries
related to abstractions were formulated in natural language. The famous Fermat theorem
is first stated in Latin:

Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadrato-quadratum in duos quadrato-quadratos, et

generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis
fas est dividere cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi.

In English, it reads as follows:

It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth
powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers.

Fermat added, in a note in the margin of a bilingual Greek and Latin edition of the
Arithmetica of Diophantus of Alexandria,

I have discovered a truly marvellous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to
contain.

For centuries, mathematicians of all kinds tried to come up with a proof. You would
need to know Latin to understand the theorem, or you would need to understand the
mathematical terms to make sense of what became a famous theorem, because almost
nobody could prove it. Later (1637), this theorem was ‘translated’ into mathematical
formulae. Fermat’s last theorem states that no nontrivial integer solutions exist for the
equation:

an + bn = cn

if n is an integer greater than 2.

With this formalism in place, one did not need to know Latin, but had to be familiar
with mathematical symbols in order to understand. This was another language, with its
own alphabet, its own syntax and its own semantics.
The pragmatics of mathematics and that of natural languages are part of the larger
pragmatics associated with any sign process. And now, over 384 years later, after
computation has changed the way we think, mathematicians say that, in order to prove
Fermat’s theorem, we would have to prove a conjecture (Taniyama-Shimura conjecture,
Darmon 1999) that deals with elliptic curves. This is by now a translation followed
by a long sequence of mathematical representations along the open-ended semiosis of
interpretations of interpretations of interpretations, and so on. Understanding, in this
case, implies specialized knowledge – mathema stands for knowledge. Mathematicians
fluent in the new languages associated with the high order of abstraction of elliptic curves
conjecture no longer revisit the original translation. They are ‘translating’ from one
mathematical language to others. However, they are still not united in fully accepting
the proof produced by Andrew Wiles (1995), a brilliant piece of mathematics, regardless
of its relation to Fermat. Colin McLarty (2010) argues that, since Fermat’s theorem is
about numbers, we should probably be able to prove it by limiting ourselves to numbers.
This means that we should not translate it from the language of numbers to that of
elliptic curves (or anything else). But this goes well beyond Fermat, and it even transcends
mathematics. It is an issue of translation.
24 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Many semiotically based activities (such as genetics, visualizations, sonification, virtual

reality, artificial life [Alife], synthetic life) are translations of questions asked in natural
language. They are pertinent to the acquisition of knowledge in our age in languages
other than those of mathematics (Nadin 2017). In such languages (such as genetics),
mathematics is often present through the formalism that makes them computable. This
subject is an issue of meta-knowledge, an outcome of translating from one language to
another and making sure that, in the act of translation, the meaning is not lost.

TRANSLATION AND ONTOLOGY ENGINEERING

Let us start with three simple definitions that pertain to meaning:

Unequivocal: One and only interpretation. Henri Poincaré (1902, 2018: 20), among
others, states, ‘What does the word mean in mathematics? It means … to be free from
contradiction.’ The language of mathematics is supposed to lead to unequivocal inferences.

Equivocal: This term has several possible interpretations. It refers to the intentional use of
language for triggering various understandings. The language of politics is one example.

Ambiguous: Open-ended space of interpretations. It is the natural language of human

communication, poetry, drama and of scientific and philosophic explanations. The
ambiguity of natural language corresponds with individual language expression within a
culture of shared means of communication.

Natural language, definitory of the human being, is by its nature ambiguous. If life in
general is defined by adaptive properties, language is the expression of adaptivity as it
pertains to human interactions mediated by words. Natural language has the life of those
born into it and using it. Different cultures evolved different languages. This pertains to
oral languages as well as to written languages (more recently recorded languages).
Languages reflect the nature of human activity in a given context. Among cultures, there
are many possible interactions. However, language interactions, in particular through
translations, remain a major form of sharing and cooperation. Of course, translations of
poetry are different from translations of scientific concepts or philosophical thoughts.
The languages of mathematics are supposed to be universal, independent of the language
in which one thinks and communicates. Moreover, they are supposed to abstract from
language (from concreteness and particularity), without falsifying what is expressed in all
varieties of natural language. The process through which mathematics acquired a meta-
status in respect to natural language follows the path from the human’s direct interaction
with reality to mediated forms of interaction.
Mathematicians do not operate on pieces of land, or on stones (which mathematics
might describe in terms of their characteristics), or on brains, on cells, etc. They produce
and operate on representations (such as the mathematical representation of the neuron), on
semiotic entities conjured by the need to replace the real with a description. The goal of the
mathematicians’ activity, involving thinking, intuition, sensory and motoric characteristics
and emotions, is abstraction. Their activity focuses on very concrete semiotic entities that
define a specific language, namely topology, algebra, category theory and so on.
Tools and machines, regardless of their type (activated hydraulically, pneumatically,
thermically, electrically, electronically, etc.), are mediating, embodied languages. By their
TRANSLATING INTO AND FROM MATHEMATICS 25

condition as constructs meant to help human beings in their activities, they are void of
interpretation abilities. Tools ‘translate’ the natural actions that inspired their making.
Machines can be activated by those who conceived and made them, and they perform
within the intended purpose. Between machines and the human being there is an
interface, namely natural language, or a specialized language (images, gestures, sounds,
etc.). Machines are associated with new nouns (names) and new verbs that expand
language. Machines, which are tools activated by energy resources different from those
of the human being, can be activated by those who conceived and made them. They are
supposed to perform within the intended purpose and generate more language, that is,
new nouns, new verbs. Interfaces are translations. They ‘speak’ the natural language of
the user, but also the restricted language of the machine.
Returning to mathematics: Is the integrating view of the world it facilitates exclusively
a human-generated representation of gnoseological intent and finality? Or can we
identify a mathematics of plants or animals, of physical processes (such as lightning,
earthquakes, the formation of snowflakes)? Does nature ‘make’ mathematics? The fact
that mathematics describes the ‘geometry’ of plants, the movement of fish in water and
volcanic activity cannot be automatically translated as ‘plants are geometricians’, or ‘fish
are analysis experts’, or ‘volcanoes are topologists’. Rather, by watching reality through
the lenses of mathematics, we identify characteristics that can be described in a language
(or several) that applies not to one specific flower or leaf, not to one specific fish or
school of fish, not to one volcano, but to all volcanic activity, regardless where it takes
place. The generality of mathematical descriptions, moreover, mathematical abstraction,
defines the outcome of the activity through which some individuals identify themselves as
mathematicians (professional or amateur).
Mathematics is, actually, as the plural of its name suggests, the many languages through
which mathematical descriptions are set forth. With the automation of mathematics, or at
least that part of it that is algorithmic, mathematics became the interface between natural
language, characterized by ambiguity and its continuous change, and the language of the
machine, a two-letter alphabet and the Boolean logic of Yes and No. The real challenge
of mathematics is to translate from the pragmatic reality of language supporting human
activity to a syntactic reality within which machines, including computers, operate.
Ontology engineering, the concrete activity through which computers are connected to
a repository of meaning, translates from ambiguity to well-defined understandings. This
can take the form of speech recognition, and also of defining various pragmatic domains.
For example, one can think of the ontology engineering of oil field exploration, of making
wine, of designing new materials, of supporting financial transactions, of writing books
(which AI, in some ways, does). The implications of assuming such a task for mathematics
itself are difficult to assess without a better understanding of what it means to translate
from reality to computational processes through which reality is reduced to its syntactic
representation. This is a huge challenge!
In the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge, sharing can involve language or
any other semiotic means of representation. Mathematics, as distinct forms of abstract
expression, consist of many languages. They are all defined by their level of abstraction.
The main characteristic of mathematics (a plural that needs to be acknowledged) is
their precision. Languages of mathematics are, most of the time, unequivocal languages.
The principle of complementarity of precision and expressiveness (the more precise a
language, the less expressive) (Nadin 2019) explains why the issue of translation between
natural languages and the language of mathematics is so difficult. The translation has to
26 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

preserve what makes the text (in a certain language) significant to mathematicians. Or,
the other way around, it has to preserve what makes a precise mathematical formulation,
such as a law of nature, significant to those who cannot understand it in its language of
origin. The back-and-forth between natural language and language of mathematics is in
itself very significant. Translations are not mechanical acts, but interpretive instances
during which knowledge is acquired.
These are preliminary methodical notes. They will help us understand what happens
when the computer, as an automated mathematics machine, entails the need to translate
from the ambiguous natural language to one or another language of mathematics. The
computer, a syntactic engine, preforms operations on sequences of symbols (0, 1, most
of the time) that are supposed to represent meaningful entities of pragmatic relevance.
Computation emerges as nothing more than a way of automating mathematics. Human
computers, that is, men and women paid to perform calculations, were slow, made errors,
got sick, took time off. An automated procedure for astronomical applications or, for
military planning, was by far more adequate and economical. Before digital computation,
others tried to reach the same goal by using means corresponding to the pragmatics
of their time. John Napier (1550–1617), the Scottish inventor of logarithms, tried
(around 1610) to simplify the task of multiplication. (Napier’s rods, or bones, as they
were called, served the purpose.) Blaise Pascal (1623–62) worked on adding machines
(1641), and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), whom I consider ‘the father of
the digital’, introduced binary code (which helped him translate from the Chinese).
Wilhelm Schickart (1592–1635) built a machine (described by Kepler) that performed
sophisticated operations, while Joseph-Marie Jacquard (1752–1834) built the loom,
which was able to generate complicated patterns (computer graphics before the age of
computers!). Many have tried to write the history of these early attempts at automatic
calculations. And many made up all kinds of stories, since the subject is conducive to
fictional accounts. Obviously, Charles Babbage (1791–1871) figures prominently in such
accounts through his two machines, namely the difference engine and analytical engine
(which apparently were never built). The same goes for William Stanley Jevons (1835–82),
who, in 1869, built a machine to solve logic problems. There was also E. O. Carissan
(1880–1925), lieutenant in the French infantry, who made up a mechanical contraption
for factoring integers and testing them for primality. And there was Leonardo Torres
y Quevedo (1852–1936), who assembled (or is famed for allegedly having done so) an
electromechanical calculating device that played chess endgames. Yes, chess is a beautiful
mathematical game that translates from real-life characters to symbolic characters. All
the machines mentioned were performing translations from reality to its quantification.
The automation of calculations for ballistics in Howard Aiken’s (1900–73) Mark
I (1944) and in the artillery calculations on a general-purpose electronic machine, on the
ENIAC (at the Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania), is, in fact, the identifier
for computation (Levy 2013). Indeed, automated mathematics is the shorthand for the
initial computer and, of course, for the entire field of computation. Behind this not trivial
observation, we find the origins of almost all the questions preoccupying us today in
respect to computation and, thus, to translating from natural language to all the language
of mathematics.
This begs some explanation. Descartes proclaimed the reduction of everything to
the cause-and-effect sequence and the reduction of the living to the machine as the
embodiment of determinism. This reduction resulted in the description of time as
duration – a distinction that is meaningful in natural language, where, in addition to what
TRANSLATING INTO AND FROM MATHEMATICS 27

clocks ‘measure’, we often consider living time (as experienced by individuals during
various activities). The living was reduced to functionality (which the machine expressed),
which, in our days, became robotics, but which started in natural language (think only of
the Golem of Prague, a mythical human-like being created of clay by a sixteenth-century
rabbi in order to protect the Jews of Prague). The program of the Descartes type of
machine is given once and for all time. Think about your clock: some program embodied
in wheels that engage each other. It does not change, as performance does not change
unless the components break down. In the deterministic machine, the implicit time
dimension pertains to its functioning, which is dictated by the physical characteristics of
the components. Such a machine exists, like everything else in Descartes’s world, in the
time dimension of existence reduced to duration and indexed to day and night – and,
thus, to the functioning of the astronomical machine. This is when the subjective
dimension of time (which preoccupied Bergson 1944 [1960]) is lost. A straight line along
which intervals are referenced – the geometrization of time, as Bergson put it – is a poor
translation of time experience into mathematics. With the advent of the computer, the
implicit assertion is reasonable: For the class of mathematical descriptions of the physics
of ballistics, artillery calculations in particular, we can conceive of a machine that will
automate the calculations. Ballistics is about precision, not feelings.
In other words, the determinism of the physics described in mathematical equations
of ballistics is such that we can automate their processing, because what they describe
was reduced to numbers. The translation from natural language into the mathematical
equations mentioned as driving the ENIAC was done by scientists (such as Aiken).
This was ontology engineering done by hand. One can generalize from such equations
to many other phenomena. Space exploration, as well as the trivial description of
playing soccer, comes to mind. One can take the mathematics of the particular ballistics
problem as an attempt at modelling many phenomena of practical impact. If we know
how to handle such difficult descriptions, we already know how to handle simpler
cases, ranging from simulating a game of billiards, to building games driven by the
same program, and to building a control device to guide a rocket. Robotic surgery is
probably the domain where the translation from natural language to the mathematics
of control mechanisms can become dangerous (and painful). But, the translation effort
is increasingly more time-consuming, and eventually impractical. Ontology engineering
aims at automating it.
The abstraction of mathematical descriptions, to which I shall return, makes them
good candidates for an infinite variety of concrete applications; that is, they are simple
translations of unequivocal statements of descriptions in natural language. This is no
small accomplishment, though it is, by far, not yet what we understand when we use the
words ‘computer’ and ‘programs’. We need to be even more specific. Ballistic equations,
as complex as they can get, are but a small aspect of mathematics. (In the meanwhile,
they have been substantially improved.) For all practical purposes, operating a dedicated
machine (driving a cannon, for instance) is nothing more than a translation from natural
language of a description of the task to which it is dedicated into the language of
mathematics adequate to the task.
The implicit assumption is that of Descartes’s machine: It performs within a world
that is regular, repetitive and predictable. Even the variety of applications it might open
is each treated the same way. But once we transcend the specialized machine and enter
the domain of computation as a universal process, we transcend the boundaries of the
reductionist perspective. And we are forced to either accept the model of a permanency
28 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

that extends from the physical to the living and to society or to acknowledge dynamics
and take up the challenge of understanding knowledge as process. Natural language is
a well-tested repository of knowledge pertinent to phenomena in which the observer
is the human being. However, when the observer is a mathematical entity – sensors,
measuring devices, etc. – natural language becomes a description of something that is
a mathematical entity. Visualizations of all kinds are examples we face continuously.
Instead of knowledge acquired in natural language, we have knowledge in the language
of mathematics ‘translated’ into natural language.
Other questions that arise and guide our endeavour are the following:

●● Is everything reducible to mathematical description?

●● Is everything describable in the language of 0, 1, which is the alphabet of the
Boolean logic that guides the computations?
●● Is Boolean logic the expression of all there is to the logical decisions we make
in life (whether it is a matter of deciding what to have for breakfast or how to
understand the genetic code)?

Wittgenstein, in rejecting the name theory of language (associated with Socrates), knew
that words do not correspond to things. Therefore, it is not enough to translate words;
rather, we should relate them to the activity they describe. Peirce’s views confirm that
it is not the semantics that matters but the pragmatics, that is, the meaning of language
associated with human activity.
Deep down, in the digital engine, there are two elements controlling and making
computation possible, namely an ‘alphabet’ and a ‘grammar’. These two together make
up a language, that is, machine language. The alphabet consists of two letters (0 and 1),
while the grammar is the Boolean logic (slightly modified since Boole, but, in essence,
a body of rules that makes sense in the binary language of Yes and No, in which our
programs are written). The assembler, with a minimum of ‘words’ and rules for making
meaningful ‘statements’, comes on top of this machine language. And, after that comes the
level of ‘formal language’ performance, in which programs are written or automatically
generated. Such programs need to be evaluated, interpreted and executed. This condensed
description of what a mathematical machine, that is, a computer, is shows that, between
the electrons that rush through logical gates and the purpose of performing a program,
there are many translations.
With this in mind, we are at the core of the problem of translation, between what
we think, expressed in natural language, and what machines are supposed to perform
in order to facilitate human activities inspired by such thinking. This is the problem
that ontology engineering addresses: how to map, automatically, from the language
descriptions of what things are – this is the classic domain of ontology – to the language
of mathematics, more precisely, to that of automated mathematics. Since the mathematics
of astronomy is different from that of geology or oceanography, ontology engineering
has to provide translations that cross disciplines. As an example, software that guides the
making of pharmaceutical products should also ‘understand’ the computer descriptions of
the medical interventions, or the supply chain (for car manufacture, home construction,
etc.) needs to ‘speak’ a common language.
Today’s ontology engineering, that is, translating language into computable
specifications of everything (e.g. ‘Siri, what’s the time?’, new medical treatments, new
materials, new forms of transactions), is nothing but the expression of how we can
TRANSLATING INTO AND FROM MATHEMATICS 29

tame language so that machines (of today or of tomorrow) can ‘understand’ what we
want, or what an artificial intelligence procedure expects. Ideally, such machines would
think the way we do, or at least mimic thinking – as in the functioning of artificial
neural networks. An artificial neuron is a mathematical construct that translates the
descriptions of neurons as observed by brain researchers. With this subject, we are
moving from ‘What is X?’ – the subject of philosophic ontology (any subject, such as
what is matter, or sex, or justice) – to ‘How do we engineer X?’, that is, make new
entities, how we think, how, under the involvement of the Turing machine, that is, the
algorithmic computer, we evaluate thinking. This is the goal of ontology engineering:
Automate the making of an actionable encyclopaedia for the language of mathematics
driving the Turing machine.
We did not try to describe here the ‘machinery’ used by ontology engineers, but in
explaining the translation activity, we came to some conclusions (presented here more as
a summary of the effort):
1. Ontology engineering provides actionable descriptions of reality. The important
qualifier ‘actionable’ means in our time computational. (There were ontologies that
were actionable in the industrial age, quite different from those we need today.
Leibniz created one for translating from Chinese into Latin or French.) In this
respect, ontology engineering is the ontology of the age of the Turing machine.
I would even call it algorithmic ontology.
2. Regardless of how this description is done (using knowledge graphs or semantic
networks, or anything else), it is actually a translation of ontology (in its broad
philosophic sense) in the language of the machine. If the machine would not have
been an exclusively syntax processing engine, nobody would have become an
ontology engineer.
3. By taking Hilbert’s challenge (Entscheidungsproblem) (Hilbert and Ackerman 1928),
Turing demonstrated that, for everything that can be algorithmically described, the
Turing machine is the procedure for processing such descriptions. I have to add a
caveat: Turing (1937) proved that there is a large part of reality that is not Turing
reality, that is, non-algorithmic (Nadin 2020). It seems that this part of his work on
Hilbert’s challenge is ignored.
4. As a deterministic machine, algorithmic computation is itself a description of reality
reduced to its syntax. That we are only adding a pseudo-semantic dimension should be
easy to understand. More difficult, and this is where Peirce comes in, is to understand
that meaning corresponds to the pragmatic dimension of the sign. It is what we want
to do. We are what we do, not only what we understand. We process not only words
but also images, sounds, textures, taste and so on. There is no one-to-one mapping
from these various perception-based sources of information to language.
5. The issue of translation from language to computerese (regardless of its type) is
actually an issue of knowledge representations. In mathematics, the object of study
is not by necessity (in Peirce’s sense, cf. synechistic categories) connected to the
real world (reality of objects and actions). Ontology engineering is about reality,
and the outcome is a computational representation. Knowledge representation in
the language of mathematics results in formalization. Ontology engineering turns
theories and models of theories, as well as algorithms for processing data from
measurement, into actual computations.
30 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

CONCLUSION
Life is characterized by a plurality of means of communication, which do not only include
natural languages but also formal and machine languages, as well as non-lingual forms of
communication throughout the biosphere. Currently, humans seem to be the only ones
engaging in natural, formal and machine translations. Throughout history, the quest for
communication across languages has received much attention. Perhaps the time has now
arrived to expand this quest to include translation between natural language and formal/
machine language, in order to explore many of the areas in which translation between
natural and formal/machine languages is circumvented. But, perhaps, the time has also
arrived to translate between these particularly human means of communication and
artificial means. Machine translation in forms yet to be developed (the non-algorithmic)
could assist in this.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
From David Brief to Marcian Guttman, Nicolae Cioranescu, Grigore Moisil and, last,
but not least, Solomon Marcus (whose understanding of mathematics and its relation
to semiotics is reflected in this text): They influenced me in making mathematics the
foundation of my entire activity. Frank Harary (credited with work on graph theory),
Robert Rosen (the mathematical biologist), Robert Marty (category theory pertinent to
semiotics) and Lotfi Zadeh (with whom I worked on fuzzy sets and possibility theory)
are yet others deserving of my gratitude in matters mathematical. Not in their footprints,
rather inspired to find my own path. If someone were to give me a second life, I would
spend it in pure mathematics and its twin sister, music.
But that is memory lane. The credit for this text coming together after I failed – for
the first time in my career – to deliver a promised text goes to Kobus Marais. His own
credentials were sufficient to convince me that I wanted to be part of a book he was
the editor of. But I could not find the energy to turn my commitment into a decent
contribution. In a collegial manner, less and less self-understood in our days, he suggested
ways to engage my limited resources and, more importantly, to maintain our dialog.
He cares for the subject. For the frustrations I might have caused him, I apologize. All
shortcomings of the text that I am signing are my responsibility.

NOTES
1 Per convention, citations refer to volume decimal entry number, not page number.
2 Idioscopy has two wings: (a) the physical sciences; and (b) the psychical, or human sciences.

REFERENCES
Bergson, H. (1944 [1960]), Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of
Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson, New York: Harper and Row. (Essai sur les données
immédiates de la conscience, Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1944).
Brin, S. and L. Page (1998), ‘The Anatomy of a Large-scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine’,
Computer Networks, 30: 107–17.
TRANSLATING INTO AND FROM MATHEMATICS 31

Cassirer, E. (1923[1955]), Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. Erster Teil: Die Sprache,
Berlin: Bruno Cassirer (Trans. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Volume 1: Language,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955).
Darmon, H. (1999), ‘A Proof of the Full Shimura-Taniyama-Weil Conjecture Is Announced’,
Research News, Notices of the AMS, December: 1397–401.
Euler, L. (1736), ‘“Solutio problematis ad geometriam situs pertinentis” [The Solution of a
Problem Relating to the Geometry of Position]’, Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum
Petropolitanae, 8: 128–40.
Harary, F. (1969), Graph Theory, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Hilbert, D. and W. Ackerman (1928), Grundzüge der Theoretischen Logik [Principles of
Mathematical Knowledge], Berlin: Springer.
Kolmogorov, A. N. (1965), ‘Three Approaches to the Quantitative Definition of Information’,
Problemy Peredachi Informatsii, 1 (1): 3–11.
Levy, S. (2013), ‘A Look Back at the Room-Size Government Computer That Began the Digital
Era’, Smithsonian Magazine, November. Available online: https://www.smithsonianmag.
com/history/the-brief-history-of-the-eniac-computer-3889120/
Markov, A. A. (2006 [1913]), ‘Classical Text in Translation. An Example of Statistical
Investigation of the Text Eugene Onegin. Concerning the Connection of Samples in Chains’,
Lecture at the Physical-Mathematical Faculty, Royal Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, 23
January, Science in Context, 19 (4): 591–600. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889706001074
McLarty, C. (2010), ‘What Does It Take to Prove Fermat’s Last Theorem? Grothendieck and
the Logic of Number Theory’, Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, 16 (3): 359–77.
Nadin, M. (2017), ‘Semiotic Engineering – An Opportunity or an Opportunity Missed’, in
K. Breitman (ed.), Conversations around Semiotic Engineering, 241–63, Berlin: Springer
International.
Nadin, M. (2018a), ‘Machine Intelligence – A Chimera’, AI & Society, 134 (2): 215–42.
Nadin, M. (2018b), ‘Meaning in the Age of Big Data’, in M. Danesi (ed.), Empirical Research
on Semiotics and Visual Rhetoric, 86–127, Hershey, PA: IGI Global Publishers.
Nadin, M. (2019), ‘Information and Semiotic Processes’, The Semiotics of Computation,
Cybernetics, and Human Knowing, 18 (1–2): 153–75.
Nadin, M. (2020), ‘Aiming AI at a Moving Target: Health or Disease’, AI & Society, 35 (1):
841–9. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-020-00943-x.
Peirce, C. S. (1932), ‘Principles of Philosophy and Elements of Logic’, in C. Hartshorne and
P. Weiss (eds), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Volumes I and II. Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press.
Poincaré, H. (2018 [1902]), La Science et L’Hypothése, Paris: Flammarion. See also: Science
and Hypothesis: The Complete Text, J. Stump (ed, trans.), M. Frappier (ed, trans.) and
A. Smith (trans.), London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Turing A. M. (1937), ‘On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the
Entscheidungsproblem’, Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, S2 (42): 230–65.
https://doi.org/10.1112/plms/s2-42.1.230
Wiles, A. (1995), ‘Modular Forms, Elliptic Curves, and Fermat’s last Theorem’, in Proceedings
of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Zürich, 1994, 243–5, 1 (2), Basel:
Birkhäuser.
Wittgenstein, L. (1964), Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe,
London: Blackwell.
32
 CHAPTER TWO

‘Translating’ Geometric
into Arithmetic Reasoning
as a Case of Negentropic
Semiotic work
MICHAEL H. G. HOFFMANN

It may be surprising to find chapters on mathematics in a book that aims to explore

and expand the notion of translation by looking at it from a variety of disciplinary
perspectives. For most people, mathematics is a universal language, so there does not
seem to be a need to translate anything. However, there is an instructive division in the
philosophy of mathematics that can be traced back to the Commentary on the First Book
of Euclid’s Elements by Proclus (Proclus 1970; he lived from 412 to 485 BCE). Proclus
analysed a controversy between Speusippus and his followers, on the one hand, and the
School of Menaechmus, on the other (both were contemporaries of Plato, about 800
years earlier). Whereas the former saw the essence of mathematics in ‘theorems’ and in
‘proving and finding’ their eternal truth, the latter defined mathematics by a focus on
‘problemata’, and saw the essence of mathematics in ‘the construction of figures’ and
the practice of creating mathematical objects that become real only by virtue of their
construction (Gajdenko 1986: 119). As I show elsewhere in more detail, beginning with
this controversy, two views of mathematics can be distinguished throughout history: either
as a universal language, with a focus on mathematics as a system of propositions for which
the notion of proof and the question of foundations are crucial, or as an activity, where
the main question is how we, as human beings, can gain such propositional knowledge.1
Nowadays it is generally acknowledged that these two views of mathematics can
exist side by side, so there is no longer a controversy (Van Bendegem 1993). What is
interesting, though, is that the conceptualization of mathematics as an activity allows
us to provide an interpretation of the notion of translation that seems to be close to
Kobus Marais’s idea that the process of translation unfolds as ‘negentropic semiotic work’
(Marais 2019). Marais points out that what gets translated in a translation is meaning,
so that a ‘comprehensive theory of translation needs to be embedded in a comprehensive
theory of meaning, i.e. semiotics’ (p. 84). Given that every presentation of meaning in
signs requires a certain system of representation, we could also say that translation is
meaning-making in a different system of representation – that is, the meaning that is
34 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

conveyed in the language of a given text or medium becomes recreated, to a certain

degree, in a different language, in a different system of representation.
Entropy is the central concept in the second law of thermodynamics, which states,
roughly, that the level of disorder in a thermodynamic system – its entropy – increases
until the system arrives at an equilibrium, that is, a state in which the entropy is highest.
For example, if you have gas particles in a closed container that are initially concentrated
in one corner, they will, after some time, be equally distributed throughout the entire
container. By using the thermodynamic notion of ‘negentropy’, or negative entropy,
Marais claims – following Torop (2008: 387) – that ‘translation is the process that
counters cultural entropy, thus, translation is a negentropic force in culture’ (‘cultural
entropy’ seems to refer here to the tendency of cultures to fossilize patterns and towards
equilibrium and stability). And,

Torop argues that this ‘negentropic translational perspective’ is the source of cultural
diversity, because it is the origin of new cultural forms. I cannot agree more with
Torop on this point. However, I do need to point out, once again, that the translational
work done in society and culture is not limited to linguistic translational work.
It also, and perhaps dominantly, includes non-linguistic, i.e. semiotic, negentropic
work. … through translation and the constraints of this process, semiotic processes
take particular trajectories, the aim of which is the creation of cultural forms.
(Marais 2019: 68)

The goal of this contribution is to show, with an example from the history of mathematics,
that such ‘negentropic semiotic work’ seems to be essential for the creation of new
knowledge in mathematics. Translating what is known in one mathematical system of
representation into another one seems to be crucial for countering ‘cultural entropy’.
The discovery of incommensurability in Pythagorean mathematics is a case in which a
proof that had first been performed by means of geometry as a system of representation has
been ‘translated’ into an arithmetic proof, thus, transforming an intuitive demonstration
into a logical one. Both proofs are performed by completely different means, but since
the result is the same – knowing that certain lengths are incommensurable – this can
be interpreted as a case of translation, as meaning-making in a different system of
representation. This translation led, finally, to an important extension of the number
system. Thus, this is a case of translation that created ‘new cultural forms’ by substantially
expanding representational systems.
According to the seminal analysis of Kurt von Fritz, the proof that certain lengths are
‘incommensurable’ – meaning they cannot be measured with a common unit – was first
performed when Pythagorean mathematicians tried to determine the ratio of side and
diagonal in the regular pentagon.2 A very old method to determine the greatest common
measure of two lengths is the method of mutual subtraction, in which the shorter length
is subtracted from the longer one, then it is checked how often the remainder fits into the
shorter one, then again the new remainder is subtracted from the first remainder and so
on, until there is no length remaining. The last remainder is, then, the greatest common
measure of both lengths.
But what happens if we apply this method to the regular pentagon in Figure 2.1? As
Von Fritz (1945: 257–8) writes,

if one looks at the pentagram or at a regular pentagon with all its diameters filled in…,
the fact that the process of mutual subtraction goes on infinitely, that therefore there
‘TRANSLATING’ GEOMETRIC INTO ARITHMETIC REASONING 35

is no greatest common measure, and that hence the ratio between diameter and side
cannot be expressed in integers however great, is apparent almost at first sight. For
one sees at once that the diameters of the pentagon form a new regular pentagon in the
centre, that the diameters of this smaller pentagon will again form a regular pentagon,
and so on in an infinite process.
It is then also very easy to see that in the pentagons produced in this way AE =
AB’ and B’D = B’E’ and therefore AD – AE = B’E’, and likewise AE = ED’ = EA’
and B’E’ = B’D = B’E and therefore AE – B’E’ = B’A’, and so forth ad infinitum, or,
in other words, that the difference between the diameter and the side of the greater
pentagon is equal to the diameter of the smaller pentagon, and the difference between
the side of the greater pentagon and the diameter of the smaller pentagon is equal to
the side of the smaller pentagon, and again the difference between the diameter of the
smaller pentagon and its side is equal to the diameter of the next smaller pentagon and
so forth in infinitum. Since ever new regular pentagons are produced by the diameters
it is then evident that the process of mutual subtraction will go on forever, and that
therefore no greatest common measure of the diameter and the side of the regular
pentagon can be found.

FIGURE 2.1 Determining the ratio of side and diagonal in a regular pentagon with the method
of mutual subtraction. (Source: Von Fritz, 1945: 257. Reprinted by permission of the Annals of
Mathematics, Department of Mathematics, Princeton University.)
36 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Mathematicians in Ancient Greece, however, were obviously not satisfied with proving
incommensurability in this ‘intuitive’ manner that requires operations on a visualization.
One has to ‘see’ the recursive structure of regular pentagons, and to infer from this
‘insight’ that the process of mutual subtraction would go on forever. In an appendix to the
tenth book of Euclid’s Elements, we find an almost entirely logical proof to demonstrate
incommensurability. This logical proof, an arithmetical proof, is about the ratio of the
side and diagonal in a square. The proof is easier to understand if we use, at least in some
parts, modern terminology such as √2, which was not yet available in Ancient Greece,
and if we both simplify things and explicate a few points that are presupposed. In the
following formulation of the proof, passages in parentheses are quoted from Von Fritz’s
translation of Euclid’s version (Von Fritz 1945: 254–5, Fn. 60), those in brackets from the
interpretation provided by Kneale and Kneale (1988 [1962]: 8), those in curly brackets
are my translations from a German version by Van der Waerden (1979: 398) and the
remaining parts are my own words.

(Let ABCD be a square and AC its) diagonal. (I say that AC will be incommensurable
with AB in length. For let us assume that it is commensurable. I say that it will follow
that the same number is at the same time even and odd. It is clear that the square
on AC is double the square on AB) because, according to the Pythagorean theorem,
a2 + b2 = c2 so that, if the sides a and b are equal as in the square, the square on the
diagonal c equals double the square of the side. The Pythagorean theorem implies that
the diagonal AC is √2 if the side AB equals 1.
If we assume that AC is commensurable, then [there are two integers, say m and
n, which are mutually prime]. {From AC/AB = m/n follows that AC2/AB2 = m2/n2.
However, since AC2 = 2AB2} based on the Pythagorean theorem, {it follows that
m2 = 2n2}. [From this it follows that m2 must be even and with it m], as implied by
Euclid 1956 IX Prop. 29. [But, if m is even, n must be odd, according to our initial
supposition that they are mutually prime. Assuming that m = 2k] because it is even,
[we can infer that 2n2 = 4k2 or n2 = 2k2; and from this it can be shown by a repetition
of the reasoning used above that n must be even]. (But it has also been demonstrated
that n must be an odd number, which is impossible. It follows, therefore, that AC
cannot be commensurable with AB, which was to be demonstrated.)

This proof realizes what was later called a ‘reductio ad absurdum’, one of the
most important tools in mathematics. That incommensurability is deduced from
an ‘absurdity’ is made clear right in the beginning, when Euclid writes that from
assuming a counterfactual – that side and diagonal are ‘commensurable’ – it would
follow ‘that the same number is at the same time even and odd’, which is obviously
absurd. Since commensurable and incommensurable are mutually exclusive,
demonstrating that commensurability leads to an impossibility is equivalent to proving
incommensurability.
When we compare both these proofs, the important point is that they complement
each other (Otte 1990). While the geometrical proof gives us the general ‘concept of
recursion’, a cognitive tool that turned out to be highly important in many other areas
of mathematics, the arithmetic proof provides the foundation for an extension of the
number system. Whereas the geometrical proof could be interpreted as demonstrating
that not everything can be described by ‘numbers’ – that is, integers and their ratios – the
‘TRANSLATING’ GEOMETRIC INTO ARITHMETIC REASONING 37

arithmetic one can lead us directly to a generalization of the number system that includes
a new entity in the ontology of arithmetic: ‘irrational numbers’, as they were called later.
When we say that the geometrical and the arithmetical proof ‘complement’ each other,
then this does not only mean that we get a ‘richer’ picture of incommensurability by
taking both into account – just as we would get a richer impression when looking at a
sculpture from various points of view. More importantly, complementarity here means
that each mode of reasoning and the representational systems used in this reasoning
support each other; they provide each other with a foundation that can be used to justify
the creation of new entities, such as irrational numbers, and new cognitive tools, like the
idea of recursion.
What we find in this example from the history of mathematics is, thus, a case in which
translation unfolds as ‘negentropic semiotic work’. The starting point is the translation of
a proof performed in geometry as one system of representation into a proof performed
in another one, arithmetic. This is a case of ‘meaning making in a different system of
representation’ because the same idea – that certain lengths are incommensurable – is
represented and justified by completely different semiotic means. On the one hand, this
translation was crucial for providing an almost entirely logical proof for what can be
criticized as being based on intuition and, thus, crucial for providing a justification of
recursion as an acceptable tool in mathematics. On the other, this translation was essential
for preparing the extension of the number system by what was later called irrational
numbers (such as √2). The translation was essential, because it is difficult to imagine
that anyone would have come up with the idea of the highly abstract arithmetical proof
without being pushed into this direction by what is intuitively very clear: the infinite
regress that can be seen in Figure 2.1. That these translations led, thus, to the creation of
new and important knowledge in both geometry and arithmetic shows that the opposite
of cultural decay into disorder took place. This is negentropic semiotic work. Instead
of increasing entropy, new ‘cultural forms’ and new order are created by expanding the
ontology of the systems of representation that were used here.

NOTES
1 See Hoffmann (2005: 85–110). For the language view, see, for example, Benacerraf and
Putnam (1983 [1964]), and for mathematics as a form of activity, Tymoczko (1998 [1986])
and Restivo et al. (1993).
2 Von Fritz (1945). More detail about additional research on the Pythagorean discovery can
be found in Hoffmann and Plöger (2000).

REFERENCES
Benacerraf, P. and H. Putnam (eds) (1983 [1964]), Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected
Readings, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Euclid (1956), The Thirteen Books of The Elements, New York: Dover Publications.
Gajdenko, P. P. (1986), Antike Traditionen im Deutschen Idealismus, Die Begründung der
Geometrie bei Platon, Proklos und Kant [Ancient Traditions in German Idealism. Laying the
Foundations of Geometry in Plato, Proclus, and Kant], trans. Bielfeldt, in N. V. Motrosilova
(ed.), Studien zur Geschichte der westlichen Philosophie: 11 Arbeiten jüngerer sowjet.
38 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Autoren [Studies on the History of Western Philosophy: 11 Works by Younger Soviet

Authors], 105–25, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Hoffmann, M. H. G. (2005), Erkenntnisentwicklung. Ein semiotisch-pragmatischer Ansatz
[Knowledge Development. A Semiotic and Pragmatic Approach], Frankfurt am Main:
Klostermann.
Hoffmann, M. H. G. and M. Plöger (2000), ‘Mathematik als Prozess der Verallgemeinerung
von Zeichen: Eine exemplarische Unterrichtseinheit zur Entdeckung der
Inkommensurabilität [Mathematics as a Process of Generalizing Signs. Three Classroom
Sections on the Discovery of Incommensurability]’, Zeitschrift für Semiotik, 22 (1): 81–114.
Kneale, W. and M. Kneale (1988 [1962]), The Development of Logic, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Marais, K. (2019), A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation. The Emergence of Social-Cultural
Reality, New York: Routledge.
Otte, M. (1990), ‘Arithmetic and Geometry: Some Remarks on the Concept of
Complementarity’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 10: 37–62.
Proclus (1970), A Commentary on the First Book of Euclid’s Elements [In primum Euclidis
Elementorum librum commentarii], Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Restivo, S., J. P. van Bendegem and R. Fischer (eds) (1993), Math Worlds. Philosophical and
Social Studies of Mathematics and Mathematics Education, Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Torop, P. (2008), ‘Translation as Communication and Auto-Communication’, Σημειωτκή-Sign
Systems Studies, 36 (2): 375–97.
Tymoczko, T. (ed.) (1998 [1986]), New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics. An
Anthology, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Van Bendegem, J. P. (1993), ‘Foundations of Mathematics or Mathematical Practice: Is One
Forced to Choose’, in S. Restivo, J. P. van Bendegem and R. Fischer (eds), Math Worlds.
Philosophical and Social Studies of Mathematics and Mathematics Education, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 21–38.
Van der Waerden, B. L. (1979), Die Pythagoreer: Religiöse Bruderschaft und Schule der
Wissenschaft [The Pythagoreens: A Religious Community and School of Science], Zürich:
Artemis-Verl.
Von Fritz, K. (1945), ‘The Discovery of Incommensurability by Hippasus of Metapontum’,
Annals of Mathematics, 46 (2): 242–64.
 CHAPTER THREE

The ‘carrying over’ and

Entanglement of Practices in
the Computer Science and
Translation Communities
DAVID VAMPOLA

INTRODUCTION
For decades, scientists and scholars have been excited by the theoretical and practical
implications of developments in computer science for investigations in translation studies.
Computers – as technological devices with increasingly sophisticated software – are
themselves certainly central to the ongoing attempt to translate source texts into object
or target texts. Usually, an investigation into the translation possibilities represented by
computers focuses on the alluring potential that hardware and software have for this
endeavour. For example, enhancements to translation procedures that use various deep
learning techniques are being developed at almost breakneck speed.
As a point of contrast in this chapter, I will explore how the ‘carrying over’ of practices
between the computer/information science and translation communities can enrich and
enlarge the objects of investigation and disciplinary activities of both groups, rather than
the consequences that specific technical developments will have on enlarging translation
studies. As a computer scientist, I will, on the one hand, identify some general practices
and assumptions found in the community of computer and information scientists, and
describe ways that these can enlarge the scope of activities undertaken by translation
scholars. On the other hand, while maintaining the perspective of a computer scientist,
I will also describe some ways that emerging concerns in the translation community
can inform the teaching and practice of computer/information science, as well as the
‘interplay’ and ‘entanglement’ between the practices of these two groups. Although
some scholars in the translation community have come to embrace transdisciplinary
perspectives in translation studies, they usually situate the activities of the translator in
relation to the humanities and social sciences. I maintain that thinking about ‘translation
beyond translation’ also promotes truly transdisciplinary work between computer/
information science and translation studies. By truly transdisciplinary work, I mean that
computer/information science and translation studies can mutually enrich each other.
40 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

‘Trans-disciplinarity’, as a dialectical process that informs all fields involved in such

endeavours, should be a goal of ‘translation beyond translation’.
Computer scientists and translation scholars obviously do not work in isolation.
As groups of researchers who act within a human context, they can be considered as
‘communities of practice’. According to Etienne Wenger, one of the originators of this
concept, a community of practice is ‘a group of people who share a concern or a passion
for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly’ (Wenger
2011). Although Wenger was primarily concerned with groups of learners who share
a common purpose, ‘community of practice’ contains two key ideas that are useful for
analysing the transfer of knowledge or information from one group to another. First,
‘community’ implies that there is a common interest that can be articulated as a goal
which binds its members together. Second, ‘practice’ refers to an activity that can achieve
the goals of a community.
There are at least two basic goals of the computer/information science (CI) community
that have relevance for translation studies. These closely linked goals are related to
practices that can achieve them. The first goal of CI practitioners is to provide a possible
model of some process or function of human life or thinking. The CI community often
takes a designated set of human activities (as a source) and represents (or translates them)
into the virtual world (as an object or target) found in the hardware and software of an
information system. An inventory control system for a business is a common example.
The boundaries of the domain of the inventory system are established and the potential
objects contained within it are identified along with their attributes. In addition,
possible procedures to accomplish the aim of the inventory system are identified. These
identification operations can be seen as establishing the constraints of the system. The
result of these activities is an abstract knowledge representational framework for an
inventory system.
The objective of providing abstract representational frameworks is linked to the second
goal: providing and executing a process that produces an actual working system. The
term ‘system development’ is often used to characterize the group of activities needed
to achieve this second goal. The specific tasks of system development are often – but
not always – conceived as a series of discrete steps. Systems analysts and programmers
often routinely perform acts of problem identification, analysis, design, construction,
implementation and testing.
The discrete concrete steps that result in achieving the objective of producing a
computer-based system can parallel those of a human translator. Consistent with problem
identification, translators need to recognize and explore what texts need to be translated.
A translator analyses a source text and then determines possible renderings of that text
into a target language. Finally, the translator decides upon a representation in the object
language and generates a translation that can be communicated to others.
Both the CI and translation communities have the goal to establish representations
of source and object/target texts, as well to embrace a process to produce an end result,
so it is not surprising that computer science has, for decades, had an important role to
play in textual translation studies. However, beyond these basic shared objectives, what
are some of the general practices of the CI community that can expand the activities of
translators? Computer science has certainly become increasingly complicated – many new
vistas, problems, and approaches have been introduced into it during its relatively brief
history. I will identify here, however, only five very broad activities that characterize
the work of practitioners in this group. In the large CI community, other practices can
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 41

be identified, but these generalized activities of this group can illustrate how CI can
contribute to enlarging the work of translation scholars.
Although the five broad activities of the CI community listed below have discrete aims,
they are to some extent interdependent.

Exploration: The CI community practices exploration in several ways that are relevant
to this discussion. First, exploring the domain of problems to be solved or situations
to be simulated is a major preoccupation of members of this community. This aspect
of exploration is, as noted above, the first step in systems development. Second, some
CI practitioners are concerned with constructing situations, or simulations, in which
various courses of action can be explored virtually. This aspect of exploration is pertinent
to the process of model building, which in turn can aid in prediction, and perhaps more
importantly, in understanding how a process operates.

Analysis: The operation of analysis has, in the past several decades, achieved the status
of a semi-autonomous activity in the CI community. Statistical methods that are not
considered intrinsic to the usual goals of computer and information science, sometimes
called ‘data analytics’ or ‘data science’, have now found their way into the activities of
CI practitioners. Analysis is sometimes combined with exploration in the process of what
statistician John Behrens (1997: 132) called ‘exploratory data analysis’. An important
aspect of exploratory data analysis is to discover patterns in data. Behrens sees that the
role of the data analyst ‘is to listen to the data in as many ways as possible until a plausible
“story” of the data is apparent, even if such a description would not be borne out in
subsequent samples’.

Control/decision-making: This is one of the longest-standing concerns of the CI

community. The earlier example of an inventory system for an organization shows how
computational techniques can provide control of resources. These techniques can help
managers to make decisions that can affect the flow of resources within an organization
or a community.

Generation: At the most basic level, the term ‘generation’ refers to ‘output’, that is, the
end point of information processing. Although the emphasis in information and computer
systems is on the output of an operation, obviously the other components of creating an
outcome, ‘input’ and ‘process’ must also be considered. There are different forms of
output (as well as input). These forms – text, images, sounds and tactile reactions – can
individually be the outcome of the generation process, or they can be combined in various
ways. Some of the most complicated combinations result in types of simulations that can
serve as representations of the world in its various forms.

Communication: In a networked environment, the exchange of information between

devices and systems is of paramount importance. Important to this endeavour is identifying
information architectures that embody protocols (conventions) that allow for the transfer
of data among heterogeneous devices and systems.

These broad activities of the CI community do not exhaust the practices of those
engaged with computers and information systems today, but they are a useful starting point
for understanding the relationship between the actual activities of the CI community and
42 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

the present and future practices of translators. Currently these computational activities
are found in some of the general activities of translators. Translators explore aspects of
a text and its context, analyse texts, make decisions about what expressions to use in
a translation, generate textual material and communicate their results to an audience.
But beyond these more conventional practices, a consideration of these operations can
serve to illustrate ways that the CI community can enlarge the work of translators. This
operation of enlargement can be characterized by processes of ‘carrying over’ practices
from the CI community to that of translators. Processes that involve ‘carrying over’
can be expressed by English words designated with the prefix ‘trans’. An examination
of translation processes identified with the terms ‘trans-organism’, ‘trans-organic’,
‘transhumanism’, ‘transmission’, ‘transduction’, ‘transformation’ and ‘trans-science’ can
demonstrate the linkage between potentially new practices in the translation community
and existing activities found in the CI group.

BUILDING ON ‘TRANS’ CONCEPTS: THE CONTRIBUTION

OF THE CI COMMUNITY TO EXPANDING
TRANSLATION PRACTICE
How can the concepts and terms associated with ‘translation’, as identified by Kobus
Marais, be illuminated using computer and information technology? As Marais (2019:
3) notes, these translational frontiers can usually be identified by the appearance of the
prefix ‘trans’. For example, ‘transmission’, ‘transduction’ and ‘transformation’ can all be
considered in this larger extension of the term ‘translation studies’.

Trans-organism: Animal communication

Practitioners in the CI community are often concerned with communication between
heterogeneous devices. The term ‘device’ can be replaced with ‘life form’. The project of
enlarging the concerns of translation scholars can include communication with ‘heterodox
life forms’. Computers can support this ambitious goal by aiding the biosemiotics project
of communication with other animals. An even larger venture is to provide the means for
the meaningful exchange of messages with possible alien life forms.
The apparent relative success of the combination of ‘big data’ and machine learning has
inspired researchers to use these techniques in areas outside of the translation of natural
languages, such as animal communication. Animal communication has been considered
a research subject for decades by semioticians who have used the terms ‘zoosemiotics’ or
‘biosemiotics’ to characterize this endeavour, albeit without the perspective afforded by
computers and information systems. Kobus Marais (2019: 118) recently identified the
general issues and what is at stake in developing a biosemiotic theory:

Biosemioticians all seem to agree that human beings have the most developed semiotic
abilities, and they also agree that language is the most complex and developed semiotic
code. What they do contest is the notion that humans are the only organisms that have
semiotic abilities, that language explains all human communication and that animals
are driven by instinct only. In any area of ecological awareness against the background
of a global crisis in this regard, in an era when post-humanism has become a buzzword
in the humanities and in an era when biologists are looking for meaning in all living
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 43

organisms, translation studies seems to be weirdly isolated from these developments,

focusing on human culture, human power and human society exclusively.

Over the past several years, the task of the biosemiotician has been aided by computers,
especially those using artificial neural networks (ANN). By using computation as a way
of understanding animal language, a wide variety of characteristics should be taken
into consideration, and the ability of machines to store a wide variety of attributes in a
distributed manner ought to aid our understanding.
The question whether animals have human-level linguistics skills remains a subject
for debate. In discussing this contentious issue, Eva Meijer observes, ‘[D]efinitions of
language decided by humans will always favor humans, and so we should include other
characteristics when engaging in thinking about other animal languages’ (2020: 92). She
is more specific about the role of computation, particularly with species outside the usual
target groups for animal communication, such as primates and dolphins. She cites a news
story published in 2015 (BBC News 2015) on the work of Chinese scientists who claimed
to have ‘decoded Panda language’. They had collected voiceprints of panda sounds and
then linked them to panda behaviour. Their main goal was to invent a machine that could
translate these voice patterns, so that humans could communicate with pandas. What
is more pertinent for expanding the boundaries of translation studies is the scientists’
aim of classifying the phenomena they observed (panda expressions of ‘emotion’) with
underlying emotional states.

Trans-organism: Communication with aliens

Speculation concerning contact with alien life forms might be a theme of science fiction,
but the subject of alien languages is now being taken seriously by scholars. If for no other
reason, translation scholars should have an interest in this process because it involves an
exploration of the limits of shared communication representations that do not necessarily
have much contextual overlap. Daniel Oberhaus provides, in Extraterrestrial Languages
(2019: 203), an overview of attempts to contact aliens. In recounting these efforts, he
also surveys linguistic techniques that are being used to attempt to communicate with
intelligent life on other worlds. Hans Freudenthal (1960: 3) developed one of these
approaches in 1960. At the time he observed,

The relation between a natural language and a code is not the same as that between two
languages. Translating from one language into another is quite different from coding
and decoding. Coding and decoding can be done by formal substitution, whereas
translating presupposes understanding. Of course this is again a gradual difference.
The relation between spoken and written language is like that between a language and
a code. Writing is like coding, and reading like decoding. Yet the rules that govern the
relations between a spoken and a written language, are much more complicated than
the rules of any cryptography.

Freudenthal makes a familiar distinction for translators, one that should always be
observed with respect to the use of computers in translation studies. This distinction is
between the process of decoding and the cognitive act of translation. For some theorists
of the philosophy of language and mind, decoding does not require an understanding of
the text, whereas translation does. The algorithmic process of mapping a source language
44 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

to a target tongue in decoding does not necessarily require a deep knowledge of what the
source text purports to mean. Human cognitive elements and structures are not in use
here; hence, what we mean by ‘translation’ does not apply to basic decoding operations.
Two points are crucial: (1) At the very least, computer and information technology
can serve as an aid to translators and to translation studies, and (2) decontextualized
decoding may be better for communicating with other species with which we do not share
a common context.
The insights of Freudenthal were elaborated further, into a functional approach to
such communication methods, by Alexander Ollongren decades later. Ollogren discusses
his approach (which he christened Lincos) in his 2013 book, Astrolinguistics: Design of a
Linguistic System for Interstellar Communication Based on Logic. The core of his approach
is based on developments in computer science that centre on symbolic transformations.
As Oberhaus notes, ‘For Ollongren, logic is an ideal starting point for an interstellar
language because it seems reasonable to assume that any extraterrestrial society capable
of sending and/or receiving interstellar messages must, to some degree, be familiar with
logic’ (2019: 203). In attempts to communicate with alien civilizations, the schemes of
Freudenthal and Ollogren push the shared cultural and social context with respect to
specific sets of symbols between humans and aliens to the periphery, though the centrality
of the transformation process, as a set of functions embedded in a form of logic, remains.

Trans-organic: Understanding viruses

Understanding viral evolution requires another application of ANNs and machine learning
that has implications for translation. Brian Hie and his colleagues at MIT propose that
natural language has affinities with some of the behaviour of a virus, particularly with
viral escape (Hie et al. 2021). Viral escape is the ‘ability of a virus to mutate and evade
the human immune system and cause infection’. These researchers

sought to train an algorithm that learns to model escape from viral sequence data
alone. This approach is not unlike learning properties of natural language from large
text corpuses because languages such as English and Japanese use sequences of words
to encode complex meanings and have complex rules (for example, grammar). To
escape, a mutant virus must preserve infectivity and evolutionary fitness – it must obey
a ‘grammar’ of biological rules – and the mutant must no longer be recognized by the
immune system, which is analogous to a change in the ‘meaning’ or the ‘semantics’ of
the virus.
(Hie et al. 2021: 284)

Here, a computer program (along with the imagination of a human team that sees a
connection) makes a translation from the source, the expression of a virus in terms of
its behaviour, into the object/target of human natural language. This work suggests
that machine learning techniques that use large, potentially networked text sources can
build methods of translation between two languages – that of the virus and that used by
humans. Beyond aiding the development of therapies that can minimize the effects of
viruses, an important theoretical link can be explored concerning the common structure
of systems of communication and action across different types of entities that affect our
‘life worlds’. The work of Hie and his colleagues can then extend the domain of elements
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 45

in biosemiotics to include not just living organisms (using the usual criterion of ‘living’)
but also less easily classified entities, such as viruses. There might be some underlying
communicative structure – as a kind of ‘language’ – that entities such as viruses and
humans share.

Trans-humanism: The generation of semiotic human-machine assemblages

The CI community’s practice of ‘generation’ creates not only traditional computer
outputs but also hybrids that combine the characteristics of persons and machines.
In a richly textured article, titled, ‘Can Computers Create Meanings? A Cyber/Bio/
Semiotic Perspective’, N. Katherine Hayles draws upon computer science, biology and
complexity theory to build a case for the potential of computers to contribute to the
semiotic dimension of the human world. She states, ‘[T]he computer is designed for
certain purposes (or self-designed, for computers that have evolved on their own beyond
their initial design parameters), and its umwelt consists of the functions, architectures,
and procedures that enable these purposes to be achieved’ (2019: 50). There are
several important elements in Hayles’ view. First, the idea of an umwelt is appropriated
from Jakob von Uexküll (one of the founders of biosemiotics). Although this term is
usually translated as ‘environment’, for Von Uexküll and Hayles, it takes on the added
meaning of a ‘world horizon’ through which an organism makes sense of its world. As
systems, computers work in environments that are determined by the constraints that
define the variables and functions that constitute the machine. According to Hayles, the
combination of logic gates, information flow, software and input/output devices makes
up a computer’s configuration, which, in turn, allows it to ‘make sense’ of the world. The
collection of the elements of a machine can then make a cognitive assemblage. Again,
in her words,

As I have argued, cognitive assemblages are everywhere in our contemporary world,

from satellite-imaging software to railroad-switching controllers to electrical-grid
components and operators. Perhaps the most obvious and visible is the internet and
the web it hosts, facilitating worldwide traffic of enormous reach and complexity.
Assuming that only the human participants in these assemblages are capable of
meaning-making practices is as erroneous and anthropocentric as believing that the
only species in the biosphere capable of making meanings are humans, a viewpoint
that has become not only untenable but dangerously skewed in its implicit acceptance
of human domination. Urgently needed are alternate perspectives that recognize the
contributions of other species to our planetary semiosphere, as well as theoretical
frameworks that underscore the importance of cognitive media in creating the
meanings that guide hybrid human-technical action, perception, and decision-making
in the contemporary world-horizon of the cognisphere.
(Hayles 2019: 51–2)

What does this quotation have to do with translation? As Hayles notes, computers and
their associated hardware possess an umwelt defined by the modes that encode, store
and process information in the machine. One aspect of Hayles’ vision is that machines
and humans, which are both capable of processing information, can, together, form a
larger group of expressions that enrich the ‘semiosphere’ and ‘cognisphere’. This insight
46 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

is compatible with the views of biosemioticians, in which the range of the practices of
translators is increased by including the generation of meanings by entities that are not
considered strictly ‘human’.
A second point is Hayles’s interpretation and appropriation of ‘assemblage’ – a
concept that is potentially fruitful for both the CI and translation communities. Hayles
presents the prospect that once machines are placed within the domain of agents that
can make meaning, there can arise a kind of hybrid that encompasses both the organic
and inorganic worlds. (Hayles’s recent thinking is consistent with her earlier work on the
‘posthuman’.) Specifically, Hayles states that the development of computers beyond being
mere calculating devices will lead to a bio-technoevolution, which is a ‘hybrid process in
which information, interpretations, and meanings circulate through flexible interactive
human-computational collectivities or, in my terminology, cognitive assemblages’ (2019:
32). Understanding the semiotic manifestations of this revolution will require the work
of translation specialists who focus on the interrelationship of representations across
potentially different semantic and pragmatic representations.

Transmission: Communication in trans-humanism and digital humanities

For a cognitive assemblage to operate, effective communication and transmission
must occur between its elements. An extension of Hayles’ vision is found in Annalee
Newitz’s short story, ‘The Translator’. In a future California, in which computers with
artificial intelligence have been granted civil rights, the machines and their software, most
of the time

couldn’t be bothered to talk to humans at all. When they did, their communications
were a soup of code and memes cobbled together out of public networks where they
had come to life. And they had dialects. One group of AIs would chat using visual
puns and turn of the century scripting languages, while another preferred binary
and medieval Latin. Who knows how they talked to each other – maybe they’d
transcended language – but when they talked to humans, they needed a translator…
Maybe translation was becoming a respected study at last.
(Newitz 2020: 248, 250)

Many scholars and scientists have made predictions about machines developing higher
cognitive abilities. These prognostications have, in fact, become something of a growth
industry, not only in academic publications, but also in the popular media.
The field of machine sentience is obviously far too vast to be treated adequately here,
but some developments are of interest to translation scholars along the lines suggested
in Newitz’s story. The most important of these was revealed by a commotion in the
popular media concerning an experiment conducted by Facebook staff in 2017. Some
media releases at the time described a situation in which two software agents engaged
in negotiation on a multi-issue bargaining task. Some of these articles also asserted
that the two software agents began to develop their own language, and the human
experimenters had to terminate their study since they had ‘lost control’ of the program.
What really occurred was more prosaic, yet still interesting to scholars of translation.
The programs were able to develop models for negotiation, initially, based upon data,
as a training set, derived from human interactions. But the behaviour of the agents was
not simply imitation of the syntax and semantics of human language. Two aspects of
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 47

learning – supervised and reinforcement learning – were also used. Supervised learning
uses a ‘training set’ that serves as a basis for imitation, whereas reinforcement learning ‘is
the problem faced by an agent that learns behavior through trial-and-error interactions
with a dynamic environment’ (Kaelbling et al. 1996: 237). The Facebook team used these
forms of learning together: ‘In effect, they used supervised learning to learn how to map
between language and meaning, but used reinforcement learning to help determine which
utterance to say’ (Lewis et al. 2017). As a consequence of the application of both types of
learning, software agents could develop communication protocols that diverged from the
established syntactic protocols of human languages. In essence, what the bots ‘learned’
was a derivation from English that was able to clearly achieve the aim of their bargaining
negotiations.
The development of efficient means of communication between software agents,
which is a concern in the CI community, is not new – computer scientists have been
investigating them for decades. Also, what has been mostly witnessed by the community
of investigators is determined by the cognitive structures afforded by ANNs, as well as the
methodological assumptions of agent-based modelling (ABM).
However, returning to Newitz, and considering wide, cloud-based datasets,
what happens when the training set is composed of an ANN and the ‘trial and error
interactions with a dynamic environment’, including the entire World Wide Web, along
with, potentially, an extraordinarily large number of agents with which to negotiate,
collaborate and compete? The result might be a form of communication not unlike what
Newitz portrays in her fictional account. If humans are to be included in this world of
software agents as near-equals, they would have to communicate with the agents. Here,
the traditional concerns of translation scholars have been radically expanded. Humans,
with their ‘natural languages’, would be in the linguistic minority, and the world of
communication would be numerically dominated by computers.
Features of ‘transhumanity’ and ‘transmission’ are merged when the communication
technology and processing and storage power of the ‘artificial’ is combined with human
cognitive abilities. Since multiple realms of meaning cannot be encompassed by any
single human brain, combining humans in a networked cognitive assemblage can provide
the required elaborate linkages among different kinds of representations. Furthermore,
interactions among large storehouses of knowledge, coupled with the cognitive
characteristics of humans, may well produce a kind of complex ‘trans-translational being’
that could emerge from these discrete elements. Such an entity invites us to expand our
notion of what is ‘human’. Expanding the boundaries of the definition of ‘humanity’ can
also encourage us to enlarge the field of ‘translation’ to include further vistas.
On a more mundane level, transmission’s role in translation studies has a crucial role
in the emerging transdisciplinary field of digital humanities (DH). DH practitioners are
exploring how ideas and cultural values are shared through social networks. An example
is Stanford University’s Republic of Letters project. Stanford scholars have sought to
recreate the network of European correspondents who exchanged ideas during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These were, of course, learned individuals who
could resort to the lingua franca of the time, Latin, to communicate with each other. But
how would the spread of ideas have occurred in the absence of a lingua franca? In DH
projects that involve the transmission of ideas, comprehensive databases with network
representations are needed, along with interpretations of the ‘information flow’ from one
group to another, provided by translation specialists.
48 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Transduction: Generation from electrical impulses to objects

‘Transduction’ is usually defined as converting one form of energy (or a message) into
another form. This conversion, from electronic bits to recognizable output, is central to
the CI community’s practice of ‘generation’. In the domain of information processing,
such conversions are found in physical computing. The aim of physical computing is to
develop devices and software that enable all machines to interact (both sense and affect)
with the environment in which they are located. This goal often requires sensors that
convert activities and movements in the physical world into signals that can be processed
by a machine. Conversely, signals that are emitted by a computer can be converted (via
some form of ‘effector’) into actions manifested in the machine’s environment. These
activities are part of the ‘The Internet of Things’. The software and technologies that
make physical computing possible can belong to the material, symbolic and networked
aspects of computing, as described earlier.
As is often the case with intellectual and cultural developments, artists have been at
the forefront of exploring the uses of transduction for cultural expression. For some
artists, physical computing as transduction is a way to ‘decentre’ the role of humans
in creating communication. These approaches, therefore, often have some of the same
aims as ‘trans-species’ communication. For example, artist Lindsey French relocated the
referential domain of communication from humans to plants. Kayla Anderson provides
French’s original description of her endeavour, ‘Concert for Plants by Plants’, as follows:

On April 26th, a cherry tree in western Massachusetts delivered a live performance to

an audience of invited houseplants in Chicago, Illinois. Attached to the cherry tree was
a piezo sensor, which measured the tree’s vibrations. These were uploaded to the world
wide web using an Ethernet Pro as a server and a friend’s wireless router, configured to
allow port forwarding. On the Chicago end, a Processing sketch gathered the data and
wrote it to the serial port in my laptop. An Arduino attached to the laptop delivered
the data to transducers, which were attached to ceramic saucers … as the medium for
the vibrations.
(Anderson 2014: 356)

Whether actual communication took place between the cherry tree in Massachusetts and
the houseplants in Chicago is not the important point of French’s demonstration. What
French provided was a framework for appreciating, and perhaps understanding, how
interaction between objects is mediated through transduction. Given the perspective that
the ‘object orientation’ perspective championed by Graham Harman and others can have
for some novel approaches to translation, transduction can serve as a method to explore
those possibilities.

Transformation: Exploration in visualization and interpretive acts

In contemporary information science, visualization has been a key activity for analysing,
as well as generating information. Central to John Behrens’s view of exploratory data
analysis (mentioned earlier in this chapter) is visualization of information that allows
us to see patterns easily. An important figure in digital media, Johanna Drucker, has
been investigating the theory and practice of visualization for decades. She has not, of
course, been alone in this investigation, but her writings on this subject are particularly
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 49

compelling. For her, visualization involves a transformation (as translation) from one
format, whether quantitative or textual, into a visual form. She writes:

[T]he idea that the graphic display is a presentation of the data stands unquestioned…
The image is considered to be the data expressed in graphic form. The goal is to find
the ‘best’ and ‘clearest’ display of data, and the correlation between the data set and
presentation is assumed to be direct, a matter of equivalence.
(Drucker 2020: 2)

Here, Drucker is expressing one aspect of visualization, which is made possible by the
physical output found in the interface; yet it also applies to translation. For example,
the role of ‘correlation’ between data set and presentation is similar to the role of a
translator taking a source text and making sure that there is a ‘correct’ translation in a
target or object text. Visualizations can offer, in themselves, suggestions or motivations
for translation. Paul Kußmaul notes this cognitive effect of visualization: ‘My hypothesis
is that when solving problems of meaning in translation, visualization may be helpful.
More specifically, visualization during source text comprehension may offer a stimulus
for translation’ (2005: 379).
In addition to referring to the cognitive value of visualizations themselves, Drucker
makes a deeper point, namely that, in the DH, in particular, the term ‘data’ itself is often
used uncritically. Instead, the concept of ‘capa’ more accurately defines the input used in
the transformative process of visualization. For her,

data is information that is captured because it fits the model of what is being measured
or parameterized. In other words, all data is actually capa. The data does not exist
independently but is captured as a result of the parameters of the search… Because
data is based on models, we tend to see what we look for in terms of interpretative
agendas.
(2020: 2)

The implication of her view is that, at least in some cases, the cornerstone of information
science, the concept of data, is not as observer-independent as some enthusiasts of the
‘digital age’ would have us believe. For her, the very act of using data in some contexts is
an interpretive act of translation that allows for its transformation.

Trans-science: The ‘carrying over’’ of expertise into decision-making and analysis

Alvin Weinberg, in 1972, saw that the expertise of scientists was sometimes called upon
in areas that are not strictly in the domain of scientists. He wrote,

Many of the issues which arise in the course of the interaction between science
or technology and society – e.g., the deleterious side effects of technology, or the
attempts to deal with social problems through the procedures of science – hang on the
answers to questions which can be asked of science and yet which cannot be answered
by science. I propose the term trans-scientific for these questions since, though they
are, epistemologically speaking, questions of fact and can be stated in the language of
science, they are unanswerable by science; they transcend science.
(1972: 209)
50 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

In Weinberg’s view, there is a domain of scientific knowledge that can intersect with
public concern, which is characterized by the term ‘trans-science’. This region is the
meeting of the methods of science – evidence, experimentation and reasoning – with
social and political values. Hence, a kind of translation occurs between these two areas.
The use of decision support and knowledge management systems can augment and
enlarge the contribution of human scientists to the area of trans-science. In the CI
community, the development of control and decision systems is an important practice.
Decision support systems and recommender systems are present in many aspects of our
web-based world. With respect to trans-science, the knowledge of natural scientists can
be represented in such systems. This process of representing knowledge in systems is a
key challenge for practitioners of artificial intelligence, and it involves processes that are
familiar to translation scholars. Basically, scientific knowledge is selected and converted
into a form that can be represented in software and hardware. These systems, in turn, can
potentially add to the discourse of scientists and the public that contemporary events have
shown is so urgently needed.
Using computer systems to model the dialogue between scientists and the public requires
this discourse to be represented in terms of the syntax and semantics of these machines,
that of functions. In computers, functions are expressed in instructions executed by a
machine. Causal reasoning can be captured in ‘if-then’ instructions; if-then statements are
expressions of conditions; that is, ‘if x is the case, then y’. Instructions that express this
relationship lie at the heart of many computer algorithms, since they allow the branching
of control within a program, based upon a single condition, or a set of conditions, being
met. But beyond the use of these commands within a program, if-then statements can
express a fundamental aspect of human intelligence, that of causal reasoning. If I am a
member of the translation community, and if I see a certain word in a sentence in a source
text, then I will translate it as a particular word in a target language. This conditional
expresses a decision.
Decision-making, which lies at the heart of intelligent action, is an important area
of investigation for translation scholars. Although individual translators make decisions
about word choice, decision-making on a larger scale can also be examined by the
translation community. Reine Meylaerts, in her pioneering work on translation policy
(2011), examined decision-making in translation on a broader sociopolitical scale. For
her, ‘a policy refers to the conduct of political and public affairs by a government or
an administration, i.e. to political or public practices as implemented in legal rules.
Such practices include the so-called language and translation policies’ (2011: 163).
These rules can be articulated by if-then constructions, and they embody decisions
that are based upon these conditional statements. As Meylaerts acknowledges, some of
the foundation for her work date back to suggestions that Jiří Levý made in 1966. He
writes, ‘[T]ranslating is a decision process: a series of a certain number of consecutive
situations – moves, as in a game – situations imposing on the translator the necessity
of choosing among a certain (and very often exactly definable) number of alternatives’
(2012: 72). Levý proposes that the cognitive act of translation is represented as a
tree-like structure, representing different options based on conditional, or if-then,
statements. These tree structures lie at the basis of computer-based decision support
systems. These structures, furthermore, are like the parse-tree representations of syntax
found in generative grammars. As Levý writes, ‘The suggestions presented here aim at
constructing a generative model of translation by means of the methods used in defining
decision problems’ (2012: 95).
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 51

Levý’s work was but a start of the effort to computationally model decision-making
in the translation process. More recently, in 1994, Wolfram Wilss updated and provided
more methodological detail to Levý’s earlier proposal. Wilss recognized that the decision-
making process in translation is an information-processing procedure that is ‘an interaction
between the translator’s cognitive system, his/her knowledge bases, the task specification
and the “problem space” in which the task of translation resides’ (1994: 148). Wilss
notes, rightly, that (at the time of the writing of his article) translation theorists had
not incorporated the theorical work done by decision theorists of the 1970s and 1980s.
His model, along with the earlier model of Levý, fits into the view of computing and
information studies as transformations of symbolic systems in a straightforward way,
with one important exception – the notions of feedback are not always fully articulated
in this way of viewing computation. The emphasis here is upon functions, algorithms and
data structures.
An important aspect of Wilss’s work focuses on the importance of pre-choice behaviour.
He characterizes ‘pre-choice’ behaviour as ‘determining when and how to decide,
determining when to seek more information or more alternatives, and determining when
not to decide or when to revoke a decision in favour of a better one’ (1994: 148). This
emphasis on pre-choice behaviour can help clarify the tasks and roles of computational
practice in the translation community. One set of inputs, as source texts, to a program
might involve the translation of mundane transactions. In fact, this activity is the basis
of much of the work that human translators perform for various organizations. For
simple translations, where there is a clear functional mapping from source text to target
text, the symbolic manipulation mode of computation and information handling might
be completely appropriate. For complicated situations, the practices of the translation
community should draw upon cognitive theories of decision-making that explore
alternatives for a particular translation, establish conditions for accepting that translation,
and determine criteria for changing it.
Translation scholars might appropriate software practices in the CI community
that have modelled ‘decision-making’ processes. In addition, the possible store of
information for making translations (and the decisions in making translations) is much
greater once computer networks and distributed databases are used. Also, the category-
generating aspects of ANNs, coupled with symbolic transformations, makes possible a
range of analytical activities. These developments have resulted in a class of decision
system, knowledge management systems (KMS), that have been used in the business
environment, and which might be useful adjuncts to not only processing translations but
also understanding how the act of translation works.
There is considerable debate among scholars about what a KMS is. This definition,
offered by John and JoAnne Girard, captures some of a KMS’s important attributes:

Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to

the creation, capture, organization, access and use of an organization’s information
assets. These assets include structured databases, textual information such as policy
and procedure documents, and most importantly, the tacit knowledge and expertise
resident in the heads of individual[s].
(2015: 4)

The last attribute involving tacit knowledge is a major representation challenge faced by
many in the CI community, that is, making explicit what is implicit.
52 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

A KMS that could be adapted for the community of translators is an exciting goal
for this group. At the most basic level, a KMS, which is usually found in organizations,
could serve as a focus of attention that could bring disparate translators together in a
more structured community. Information sharing among translators could be facilitated,
since a KMS would retrieve information from disparate collections of data in many
languages found in a networked, distributed environment. This collection could ideally be
constituted as a systematic corpus of ‘languages’ that can be analysed by many users who
embrace comparative methods. Teams from the CI and translator communities, working
together to understand the processes of making decisions in a translational context better,
as well as approaching the difficult problem of representing and using the tacit knowledge
of translators, can implement and test their findings in a KMS. Such a system, with its
encoding of institutional protocols and decision-making, might provide a computational
means for modelling ‘translation policy’, as articulated by Meylaerts. Finally, by making
the information that is the result of a knowledge management translation system available
and disseminated to a wider group, the ideals of ‘trans-science’, which brings together
disparate intellectual communities, can be better realized.

SIMULATION: THE INTERPLAY AND ENTANGLEMENT

OF CI AND TRANSLATION PRACTICES
A challenging area for translation studies lies beyond considering the ways that work done
in the CI community alone can enlarge the scope of practices in the translation community.
From a transdisciplinary perspective, members of both the CI and translation communities
should consider the question of how practices and approaches in these communities can
affect each other. Simulation is one area in which the interplay, or entanglement, between
these practices is exemplified.
The etymological root of ‘simulation’ refers to similarity, or imitation. A basic goal
of the CI community is to build a representation that is similar to some aspect of reality.
This has been an aim of the CI community since computers became generally available.
This goal, which is often exploratory, engages all the other aspects of the practices of the
CI community. As Stefano Za and his colleagues explain, ‘Simulation has been adopted
in many fields as a means to understand a system’s behavior by imitating it through an
artificial object that exhibits nearly identical behavior’ (2018: 268). Simulations can differ
in terms of the boundaries (i.e. the range of the phenomena) that are part of its domain. The
domain of some simulations can be highly circumscribed, such as modelling the passage of
a vessel through a tank of water. Others can involve a domain in which people (as agents),
events and landscapes interact. Sometimes the term ‘microworld’ is used to characterize
the environment that is captured by a simulation. A ‘microworld’, furthermore, allows for
simulators to be imaginative with respect to establishing the boundaries and properties
of these worlds. In a non-computational application, science fiction writers (or for that
matter, writers in general) use ‘possible situations’ as microworlds.
Often the aim of simulations is to build and test models and interpretations that can
verify and clarify a theory. Another aim is verisimilitude. Continual advances in the speed
of machines, along with their enhanced visual, audio and tactile capabilities, and their
increased networked functionality, can bring more information to the simulation, making
possible a more immersive sensory experience. This verisimilitude allows the simulation
to more accurately correspond to a situation in which humans live. Finally, simulations
raise issues in ontology. For computer and information scientists, ontologies have special
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 53

significance. The term is traditionally associated with philosophy, in which ‘ontology’ is

the ‘study of being’ or ‘what there is’. A philosophical approach to ontology is concerned
with objects and their attributes. Contemporary computer and information science
extends the work of philosophers. For them, ‘ontology’ refers broadly to a systematic
approach to knowledge representation. Often these representations take the form of
taxonomies or classifications. The activity of building ontologies does not always lead
to well-defined representations. Instead it can lead, in a term used by David Lane and
Robert Maxfield, to ‘ontological uncertainty’ (2005: 3–50). This uncertainty, which, in
their view, can lead to innovation, is derived from beliefs that a group of practitioners
have about ‘1) what kinds of entities inhabit their world, 2) what kinds of interactions
these entities can have among themselves, and 3) how the entities and their interaction
modes change as a result of these interactions’ (2005: 10). Through a consideration of
new research areas, the translation community can provide ‘ontological certainty’ to
representations made by the CI community, which, in turn, can bring about innovation in
thinking about representations that Lane and Maxfield propose.
Approaches in translation studies that embrace ‘complexity thinking’ have the potential
to inform deep considerations about knowledge representations. In several works, Kobus
Marais has maintained the importance of complexity studies as an aid to understanding
the dynamics of translation. His views on this subject, which will not be summarized here,
have essentially challenged much of the traditional thinking about translation, to argue
‘in favor of a multi-level, hierarchical view of reality in which causality is a non-linear,
complex phenomenon’ (Marais 2014: 11). In keeping with the centrality of emergence,
Marais observes, ‘[S]ocial reality emerges out of the semiotic interactions of humans … this
implies that translators are indeed agents in the emergence of social reality in multilingual
groups or in cases where groups come into contact with one another’ (2014: 11). Marais’s
recognition of agency suggests yet another component of simulation – that of agency. In
the context of simulation, agents are constituent elements of models or ABMs (Epstein
2006: 5–6). Using complex simulation modelling may also illuminate theories of politics,
society, and culture, which are important new areas for translation studies.
A representation of the interaction of dominant cultures with subordinate ones can
serve as a focus for both the CI and translation communities. Analysis of the role of
hegemonic groups has been a long-term concern of social scientists and cultural theorists.
This intellectual activity has – if anything – accelerated in the past forty years. The
landmark thinkers of this intellectual enterprise abound – in particular, the work of
Michel Foucault on power and Pierre Bourdieu on the formation of hegemonic cultural
capital are but two examples. One scholar from translation studies who is interested in
these power relationships is Tejaswini Niranjana. Like Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha and others, Niranjana is interested in the relationship
between colonizer and colonized groups. For her, as for others, the cultural element
of colonization is important. She writes that translation is ‘a significant site for raising
questions of representation, power and historicity. The context is one of contesting and
contested stories attempting to account for, to recount the asymmetry and inequality of
relations between peoples, races, languages’ (1992: 1). Niranjana’s forceful investigation
springs mainly from sources found in literary theory. An empirically based approach
might consider aspects of the relationship between hegemonic and minority discourse, by
building a hypothetical model of computational agents that make up a majority of users
of a particular language and seeing how those entities interact with a linguistic minority
constituted by another group of agents.
54 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

With respect to building such a simulation, the recent work of Marco Civico is a
valuable starting point. In ‘Evidence from an Agent-Based Model of Language Contact’
(2019), he develops an agent-based model that simulates language contact within a
multilingual community where there are a majority of agents who use one language, and
a minority who use another. He writes,

The individual choice of language for communication is based on a number of

simple rules derived from a review of the main literature on the topic of language
contact. These rules are then combined with different variables, such as the rate
of exogamy of the minority group and the presence of relevant education policies,
to estimate the trends of assimilation of the minority group into the majority one.
The model is validated using actually observed data from the case of Romansh
speakers in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland … macro-level language contact
dynamics can be explained by relatively simple micro-level behavioral patterns and
that intergenerational transmission is crucial for the long-term survival of minority
language groups.
(2019: 1)

Civico’s research brings together ABM simulations with theories of complexity. The
interactions of individuals who speak the language of the majority of the population with
individuals in the linguistic minority can be modelled using this method. The analysis
of these interactions can have larger implications for understanding the sociopolitical
relationship between dominant and subordinate groups, Civico’s approach, however, is
but one starting point for thinking about simulations in a broader way.
Bruno Latour provides an intellectual starting point for these broader considerations
when he writes

more supple than the notion of system, more historical than the notion of structure,
more empirical than the notion of complexity, the idea of network is the Ariadne’s
thread of these interwoven stories… [Such a thread] would allow us to pass with
continuity from the local to the global, from the human to the non-human. It is the
thread of networks of practices and instruments, of documents and translations.
(1993: 3, 121)

Latour later regrets his use of the term ‘network’, since it has come to signify a set of
technologies and social theories that have replaced, in many peoples’ minds, what he
meant by ‘Ariadne’s thread of these interwoven stories’. As he writes, ‘More precisely
it is a change of topology. Instead of thinking in terms of surfaces –two dimension – or
spheres – three dimension – one is asked to think in terms of nodes that have as many
dimensions as they have connections’ (2017: 176). Furthermore, keeping with the
centrality of the use of agents in simulations, he writes,

[T]his is why ANT [actor-network theory] adds to the mathematical notion of

network a completely foreign notion, that of actor. The new hybrid ‘actor-network’
leads us away from mathematical properties into a world which has not yet been so
neatly charted. To sketch these properties, we should now move on from static and
topological properties to dynamic and ontological ones.
(2017: 179)
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 55

Hence, deeper thinking about simulation can give rise to general theories of the
relationships of persons, to not only each other but also the non-human world.
In terms of translation studies, the possibilities of this non-human world are explored
by Hito Steyerl (2020). In her essay, following the work of Walter Benjamin (see his
‘Languages of Man’), she writes, ‘[W]hat if things could speak? What would they tell
us? Or are they speaking already and we just don’t hear them? And who is doing the
translating?’ (168). In Civico’s simulation, he models the interactions of speakers of
natural languages. But a tantalizing prospect for translation studies is to include new
objects into computer-based representations. Here, the widening of the translational
ontology (or new areas that are investigated by translation scholars) can widen the domain
of knowledge representations that are modelled by CI practitioners.
One candidate for enlarging translational ontology is found in the work of Finbarr
Barry Flood. His motivation, like Civico’s, relates to understanding the dynamics between
hegemonic and subaltern populations. He writes,

The historical master narratives in which both those subjects have been inscribed are
dominated by the idea of great (or lesser) civilizations, ‘a world of bounded spaces and
identities, among which people may move but within which they live. This invariably
encourages the ‘vertical fallacy’, the idea that the identity of human agents who act
to shape such phenomena (and by extension, the cultural forms and practices with
which they are associated) can be adequately represented by oppositional tabulations.
The subjects with which the identities and identifications of premodern subjects were
imbricated and by which they were implicated have similarly been imbued with an
identity that inheres in essence, form and function, rather than agency, circulation
and use.
(Flood 2009: 265)

The case that supports these theoretical assertions is found in Flood’s book, Objects of
Translation: Medieval Culture and Medieval ‘Hindu-Muslim’ Encounter. As a historical
backdrop, Flood examines the south-central areas of Asia (today the regions that are
found in Afghanistan, Pakistan and northern India) during the period from the early
eighth to the early thirteenth centuries. Of particular interest here is his discussion
concerning the introduction and transfer of material objects between Islamic and Indic
cultures in the ninth and tenth centuries. A salient example is found ‘in the circulation
of items and modes of dress, and its implications for differing conceptions of the body’
(Flood 2009: 13). A particular case of such circulation is found in the appropriation of
‘Turko-Persian modes of dress’ by members of the Buddhist hierarchy in the conquered
area of northern India. Identifying the variables that are embodied in the agents of the
Islamic figures’ original apparel and the adoption of these forms of dress by agents
of the Buddhist elite would constitute, in itself, an elucidation of the initial and final
conditions for this ‘translation’ (as reception). A computer representation of this
translation of dress from one culture to another would be a way to consider the relevant
variables and to visualize this process. The work of building a computational ontology
can, hence, work in tandem with the models developed by the translation community,
each set of practices enriching the other.
Another candidate for widening the domain of translational ontology is found in the
emerging field of ‘sound studies’, which elevates the importance of sound (in contrast
to the visual) for defining and understanding the dynamics of cultural identification and
56 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

change. Music of one culture is usually translated or interpreted and then relocated
in another culture, or at least another cultural context, through scholarly discourse.
Some striking examples of this work are found in the studies done by Thomas Irvine
(2020) and Sheryl Chow (2020: 83), which examine the encounter between European
and Chinese musical cultures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In both
works, careful textual analyses of the interpretation by various European travellers
and thinkers are made to elucidate the transmission and reception of Chinese musical
sounds in the West. Here, the techniques of textual analysis by computers could help. An
intellectually daring project could involve defining groups of agents in different cultures
and attempting to simulate the reception and transmission of features of music from one
group to the other one.
A virtue of building computational simulations of cultural transmission is that they lead
to a deeper appreciation of the processes of translation, while expanding the boundary
of translation studies. At the same time, translation scholars can inform members of the
CI community about the characteristics of translation objects that become knowledge
representations in the computational domain. Returning to the idea of ‘system’, the
construction of a system allows us to think explicitly about the variables and functions
that constitute it. Putting the elements together so that they function in a particular
manner gives us an idea of what that system is from an operational point of view. Also
present is the role of prediction and explanation – if we vary the values of the variables or
change the functions, we can retrodictively explain why a particular translation pattern
took place. As the symmetrical opposite of retrodiction, correct prediction gives us the
assurance that the simulation is correct.
Entanglement between the practices of the translation and CI communities is also
displayed through a consideration of ‘syn-’ words. Many of the concepts that Kobus
Marais believes can enlarge the scope of traditional views of translation have the prefix
‘trans’. There is another domain of terms that can also enhance our view of translation
that begin with the prefix ‘syn’. English language appropriations from the Greek root
‘syn’ can have two meanings, both of interest to communities of computer scientists
and translation scholars. The first of these senses of ‘syn’ refers to a ‘bringing together’,
as a complement to the sense of ‘trans’ as ‘carrying over’. One of the practices of the
CI community, communication, ‘brings together’ various aspects of ‘trans’ words, to
construct web pages that combine, or mix, media of different forms. Designing these
interfaces requires an act of transformation, as discussed above, as well as the ability to
effectively combine media in a way that provides an experience for the viewer. Combining
media is not limited to only the effective composition of web pages – it also extends to the
design of multimedia simulations. The web interface, which media theorist Lev Manovich
sees as a ‘new aesthetic category’, is made possible by bringing together some of the
‘trans’ processes that are practiced in new areas of translation studies.
A second sense of ‘syn’ concerns the activity of establishing ‘likeness’, which is captured
in the word ‘synonym’. This comparative aspect has been captured in the work of scholars
such as Caroline Walker Bynum (2020) and Paul North (2021). In particular, Bynum
observes:

The persistent need to compare raises immediately the problem of how to choose
appropriate comparanda. The ideas, images, and institutions of ‘now’ that we use to
think with must bear some useful ‘likeness’ to what we are studying in the past. But
this, in turn, raises the question of what constitutes ‘likeness.’ It is my contention that
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 57

scholars in many areas of the humanities have failed to understand how complicated
‘likeness’ as a concept is and how difficult it is to choose appropriate ‘likes’ in doing
comparative study. It is also my contention that there are little-explored resources in
the western tradition for both interrogating and understanding ‘likeness’.
(2020: 31)

The process of determining likenesses is an aspect of the larger process of translation. At

a very simple level, a translator determines whether a particular word in one language
is similar to a word in another language. But, in a broader and more profound sense,
translators compare languages, codes and symbols (and, by extension, worlds) with each
other to determine likenesses. Computers can help in the process of identifying similarity
though the use of artificial neural network (connectionist) models. These connectionist
models are often used in classification procedures in which determination of similarity
is a goal.
Beyond this operation, however, the process of determining what counts as ‘similarity’
in operationalizing these procedures affords the opportunity, following Bynum’s view, to
understand ‘how complicated “likeness” as a concept is’ (2020: 31). Understanding the
operation of ‘likeness’, thus, helps us to understand not only the process of translation but
also, for computer scientists, the identification of objects and their attributes. Although
John Sowa recognized the importance of semiotics for computational ontologies over
two decades ago, the focus of his view was still anchored on adapting semiotic principles
to a logical structure dictated by the demands of the CI community at the time (Sowa
2000). Bynum and North challenge computer scientists to take seriously Ferdinand
de Saussure’s emphasis on understanding the processes of difference and similarity in
creating meaning, and in turn provide greater ‘verisimilitude’ in developing knowledge
representations.

THE COGNITIVE TRANSLATOR: HOW THE PRACTICES

OF TRANSLATION CAN IMPROVE PEDAGOGIC
PRACTICES IN THE CI COMMUNITY
Although much has been written on the psychology and ideologies of the CI community,
comparatively less empirical research has been done on the way people learn computer
programming. The usual view in the CI community is that computation is allied with
processes that promote mathematical reasoning, and that a solid mathematical training
that includes courses in calculus and discrete mathematics is the best way to prepare and
cultivate the skills that are necessary to learn computer programming. A study done by
Prat and colleagues in 2020 asserts that these numerical skills are important, but that an
aptitude for learning natural languages is of even greater significance. The authors state,

The research described herein is motivated by a conceptual paradigm shift, namely,

that learning to use modern programming languages resembles learning a natural
language, such as French or Chinese, in adulthood. Specifically, we argue that research
on the neurocognitive bases of programming aptitude has largely missed the fact
that computer programming languages are designed to resemble the communication
structure of the programmer (human languages).
(Prat et al. 2020)
58 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

For the translation community, this research is potentially very important. Computer and
information science is increasingly being seen as vital to the functioning of the world in
the twenty-first century, yet a major practice of training individuals in these fields is being
largely ignored. Effective methods of educating nascent programmers should include
the skills that translators have always practiced. Here is an area where the translation
community’s practices should be examined, and perhaps appropriated, by the CI group.
Further study is obviously required, and it is probably not enough to simply train
computer programmers to act like translators. To effectively enact an education
programme, the underlying cognitive assumptions regarding learning new practices needs
to be understood. In the field of translation studies, the roots of a cognitive ‘process-
oriented’ approach are found in the classic works of James Holmes and Gideon Toury.
These seminal insights have been extended by many scholars, such as Hanna Risku,
Sandra Halverson, Andrew Chesterman and Maria Tymoczko, to name a few. Yet,
recently, as Ricardo Muñoz Martín perceptively observes, ‘it is doubtful that research on
the interface between cognition and translation and interpreting can make any further
substantial progress without addressing basic questions about the object and nature of
our enterprise, and the conceptual tools we need for it’ (2017: 558). Muñoz Martín
correctly identifies the perspectives of symbolic processing, connectionist and the 4EA
(embodied, embedded, enactive, extended and affective) as central to the ongoing effort to
incorporate the cognitive point of view into translation studies. The field of computational
cognitive science, however, is in a state of flux, in which all of these perspectives (as well
as possible relationships between them) play research roles. Given the shifting loyalties
of computationally oriented cognitive scientists, it will be difficult for any theorist in the
translation community to authoritatively embrace any of these positions at this time as
a single paradigm for cognitive translation studies. Even with this uncertainty regarding
methodologies, the translation community’s contributions to thinking about the process
of translation can inform the pedagogical assumptions of the CI community. Perhaps
translation scholars need to take even more seriously what Patrick Colm Hogan said about
literature and the arts: ‘If you have a theory of the human mind that does not explain the
arts, you have a very poor theory of the human mind’ (2003: 3). (Translation scholars can
replace the word ‘art’ with ‘translation’.) By informing a theory of cognition, which can
shed light on the way we learn to translate representations, translation scholars can help
the pedagogic practice of teaching an important skill, that of computer programming.
But even more fundamentally, the cognitive investigations of an even greater number
of translation scholars can give insights to all disciplinary communities who regard the
process of making and using representations as a central aspect of their practice.

CONCLUSION
It is not at all surprising, given the growth of computer and information science over the
past decades, that practices from this community would pervade those of other groups
and lead to new areas of investigation within them. Most of what has been ‘carried
over’ from the CI community has been characterized by words with the ‘trans’ prefix.
The broad practices embodying control/decision-making, communication, exploration,
generation and analysis have been transmuted by this ‘carrying over’ process, into new
practices and areas of investigation for the translation community. One of the values
held by many in our age, however, is that computer and information science provides the
paradigmatic representations and processes that should be embraced by all disciplines.
THE ‘CARRYING OVER’ AND ENTANGLEMENT OF PRACTICES 59

Computer and information science has high ‘disciplinary capital’, that is, this field is
estimated as having high ‘worth’ through the economic, social, intellectual and political
value that it can bestow upon individuals and institutions. This has led some members of
the CI community to acquire a kind of intellectual arrogance, making them believe that
the methods of their group are the only way to represent aspects of reality. It is a major
thesis of this chapter that the ‘carrying over’ of practices between the CI and translation
communities need not be one-way. Insights by members of the translation community
about simulation and cognition, for example, can be fruitfully appropriated by the
CI community. This interchange can enrich the CI community’s high level of disciplinary
capital, but it can also raise that of the community of translators. This process of mutual
sharing – as transdisciplinarity – not only encourages ‘translation beyond translation’ but
can also help bring about ‘computer science beyond computation’.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author is deeply grateful to Kobus Marais, Jean Chambers, Hettie Human and two
anonymous referees for their comments on this chapter.

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62
 CHAPTER FOUR

Biology of Translation:
The Role of Agents
ALEXEI A. SHAROV

INTRODUCTION
Translation studies is usually focused on the transfer/transformation of meanings from
one human sign system to another – especially between languages. The term ‘translation’
is almost identical to ‘interpretation’, but ’translation’ is more relevant when it is applied
to lower-level or automated processes that preserve most of the incipient meanings. For
example, Kalevi Kull and Peeter Torop (2003: 318) wrote, ‘Translation, quite generally,
means that some signs in one language are put into a correspondence with some signs in
another language’, and they also assume that ‘the translation method is formed as a set of
technical procedures’ (ibid.: 315). Kobus Marais (2019) proposes broadening the meaning
of ‘translation’ from the perspective of Peircean semiotics. In this sense, translation refers
to semiotic process phenomena that relate the interpretants in different systems of signs,
and the process involves contextually guided construction of meaning in a mental or real
world. Such a generalized notion of translation was proposed earlier by Roman Jakobson
(1959: 233); he called it intersemiotic translation, which is ‘an interpretation of verbal
signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems’.
In this chapter, I discuss various biological translation processes, or ‘natural translation’,
and follow in the footsteps of Jesper Hoffmeyer (2003) and Kalevi Kull and Peeter Torop
(2003), in chapters published in the volume, Translation, Translation (Petrilli 2003).
Hoffmeyer considers natural translation to be ‘any process whereby a potential message
is made accessible to a natural system that would not otherwise be capable of making
sense of this message’ (2003: 335).
Biology is perhaps the only discipline, besides the humanities, where translation has
become a widely used technical term. In molecular biology, this term means protein
synthesis on the ribosome, where a sequence of nucleotides in a messenger RNA (mRNA)
is used as a code (i.e. genetic code) for attaching amino acids to the elongating protein
polymer in a specific order (see next section). Another unique role of translation in biology
is that, in contrast to anthroposemiotics, which is focused on signs themselves in respect
to human language, communication and knowledge, biology is focused on studying
organisms, parts of organisms (e.g. organs, cells, organelles, molecular complexes) and
multi-organism systems (e.g. colonies and symbiotic consortia), which can all be called
agents, and signs utilized by agents as information-carrying tools (Sharov 2016a) are
of secondary importance. In this respect, Marcel Danesi (2001) considers semiotics
64 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

subservient to biology. Even so-called natural signs do not exist without agents, because
the meaning of these signs is agent-specific; in other words, signs are grounded in agency
(Sharov 2018). In particular, translation of signs and messages is performed by agents
as a part of their living functions, and translation is aimed at constructing, repairing,
recruiting or reprogramming those agents, their subagents and/or external agents. Agents
are either living organisms or products of organisms (e.g. ribosomes, protein receptors,
or autonomous artefacts, such as robots). I attribute translation to agents of varying
complexity, from molecular mechanisms to cognitive animals (e.g. all vertebrates and
many insects) and humans.
Here, I discuss the classical example of biological translation, which is protein
synthesis, as well as alternative translation processes in molecular, cellular, developmental,
physiological, behavioural, social, ecological and evolutionary aspects of living systems.
Translation and interpretation of signs in organisms and other agents are studied in a
discipline of biosemiotics that integrates semiotics with biology (Hoffmeyer 2008). It
represents a junction of the humanities with science, and draws science beyond mechanistic
reasoning.

PROTEIN SYNTHESIS AS TRANSLATION

The turning point in the development of biology was the discovery of the structure
of DNA (Watson and Crick 1953) and the subsequent uncovering of the molecular
foundations of heredity (Jacob 1973). These discoveries showed that genes are parts of
DNA molecules that encode the sequence of amino acids in all proteins in living cells.
Molecular biologists routinely use the language metaphor to explain molecular processes
in cells. The synthesis of the mRNA molecule, as a reverse-complementary copy of the
genomic DNA sequence of a gene, is called transcription, whereas the protein synthesis
on a ribosome, guided by the sequence of nucleotides in the mRNA, is called translation.
These became technical terms in molecular biology, and were later incorporated in more
complex derivative terms. For example, proteins that facilitate or regulate transcription
are called transcription factors, and proteins involved in translation are called translation
factors.
In contrast to human communication, which is mostly interactive, the information
transfer in cells is typically unidirectional: from DNA sequence to mRNA sequence and
then from mRNA to the order of amino acids in the protein. This concept was first
proposed by Francis Crick (1958), who emphasized the fundamental irreversibility of
protein synthesis (he called it ‘the central dogma’, because of the deficiency of direct
evidence). Crick wrote:

In more detail, the transfer of information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from
nucleic acid to protein may be possible, but transfer from protein to protein, or from
protein to nucleic acid is impossible. Information means here the precise determination
of sequence, either of bases in the nucleic acid or of amino acid residues in the protein.
(1958: 153)

Later, it was discovered that some viruses can copy the RNA sequence to DNA using
enzyme ‘reverse transcriptase’ – this shows that the central dogma is not universal.
However, there are no examples of natural processes that convert a protein sequence to
an original nucleotide sequence.
BIOLOGY OF TRANSLATION: THE ROLE OF AGENTS 65

The details of information transfer from a gene to the protein, known as gene
expression, are as follows. The first step is transcription, which is copying of a DNA
sequence into the newly synthesized RNA sequence performed by the RNA polymerase
enzyme. Both DNA and RNA are nucleic acids, which are long polymers of nucleotides
linked via sugar (desoxyribose or ribose, respectively) and a phosphate. DNA is a double-
stranded spiral (helix), where two polymers have matching pairs of nucleotides: A, T, G
and C in one strand match to T, A, C and G, respectively, in the other strand. In contrast,
RNA is a single-strand polymer synthesized in a template-matching way on one of the
DNA strands. In the nucleus of a cell, the RNA polymerase, assisted with one or multiple
transcription factors, binds to the starting end of a gene, called promoter. This action is
followed by the separation of two DNA strands, and RNA polymerase moves along one
of the DNA strands and adds nucleotides to the RNA that match to the DNA nucleotides
using the same rule of pairing as in the DNA helix. The only difference is that, instead
of the T nucleotide, the RNA uses a similar substitute, U. From the semiotic point of
view, biological transcription is a subtype of translation, which is literal and automated,
but not deterministic, because it is regulated by a large number of internal and external
signals. Transcription of a gene sequence is a goal-directed semiotic process (in contrast
to unintended making footprints on a sandy beach), because it presumably emerged as
a result of adaptive evolution from other primordial metabolic functions (e.g. RNA-
templated RNA synthesis), and it is performed by the RNA polymerase enzyme, an agent
that evolved to perform this specific function guided by imprinted goal directedness.
After being synthesized, the RNA becomes separated from the DNA via breaking
the weak hydrogen bonds between nucleotides. The RNA is usually processed further
by polyadenylation (adding a tail of many A-nucleotides), and splicing (removing non-
coding fragments). Processed RNA molecules are transported from the nucleus to the
cytoplasm through nuclear pores. Their major function is to guide the protein synthesis
on ribosomes, although some species of RNA have other functions – they are called non-
coding RNA. Using the language metaphor, a protein-coding RNA molecule is called
messenger RNA (mRNA), because its sequence is a ‘message’ to the ribosome. A ribosome
is a molecular agent that consists of multiple non-coding RNA and protein components. It
binds to the starting end of mRNA and makes a polypeptide (long continuous unbranched
chain of amino acids) with the specific order of amino acids as programmed by the mRNA.
A polypeptide is processed further to make the final functional product – a protein – via
folding, cutting, linking distal loops, insertion into the membrane and modification of a
few individual amino acids.
Translation at the genetic/molecular level can be formally described by a set of rules
(known as the genetic code) that converts the sequence of nucleotides of mRNA sequences
into the sequence of amino acids in the polypeptide. The sequence of nucleotides is first
partitioned into triplets (also called codons), and then each of the 64 possible triplets is
assigned a certain meaning in the synthesis of the polypeptide. Most triplets (n = 61)
entail adding a specific amino acid (from the set of 20) to the end of the polypeptide,
and three stop codons (UAG, UGA and UAA) entail termination of polypeptide synthesis.
Translation starts at some distance from the beginning of the mRNA, and the start codon
is usually AUG (less frequently UUG or GUG). Usually, the first start codon from the
beginning of the mRNA is the one used for starting translation. The AUG codon also
encodes the methionine amino acid in eukaryotes; thus, a large number of proteins have
a methionine amino acid at their first position. The function of the start codon is not only
to mark the start of translation but also to define the reading frame, which is the partition
66 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

of the coding mRNA sequence into triplets. There are three possible reading frames, and
the first start codon in mRNA does not always mark the longest open reading frame (from
the start codon to the first stop codon). Computationally identified, the longest open
reading frame is a more reliable indicator of translation in vivo than the position of the
first start codon. However, a ribosome translates the mRNA sequentially and, therefore,
it cannot ‘predict’ the length of the open reading frame. Thus, there should be additional
factors that assist ribosomes in finding the correct start codon.
The biochemistry of protein synthesis is much more complex than the formal genetic
code. The main agent is a ribosome, which interacts with one linear mRNA and a
continuous flow of small noncoding RNA (75–90 nucleotides long) called transport RNA
(tRNA), which are each loaded with a phosphorylated amino acid and enzyme aminoacyl
phosphatase. The tRNA molecule is folded into a cross-like shape, and one end extends
three sequential nucleotides, called anticodon, that should match to a codon in the
mRNA. The ribosome handles three mRNA codons at a time: two of them are occupied
by matching tRNA, and one is empty. The empty space can be filled by a third tRNA,
whose anticodon matches the corresponding mRNA codon. If matched, the tRNA moves
into the next position, where it brings the amino acid next to the growing polypeptide
chain. The ribosome acts as a catalyst to connect covalently the new amino acid to the
polypeptide. The tRNA is then moved to the third exit position in the ribosome, from
which it is released into the cytoplasm. The whole process requires energy in the form of
four ATP1 molecules converted to ADP per each attached amino acid.
Ribosomes have a number of additional functions besides translation itself. Binding
a ribosome to the mRNA requires interaction with a translation initiation factor EIF4E,
which is used by cells to regulate the overall rate of translation. A ribosome can detect
errors in translation and respond by stopping and marking the damaged protein for
degradation. Also, ribosomes can detect errors in the mRNA sequence itself. For example,
if one nucleotide is missing in the mRNA (due to either transcription error or mutation
in a gene), then the reading frame shifts, which could create a premature stop codon.
A ribosome stops translation at this codon and initiates a so-called nonsense-mediated
mRNA decay mechanism that ends up with mRNA degradation. Another common defect
in mRNA is premature polyadenylation. If this defect appears in the coding region of
mRNA, it causes translation halt and polypeptide degradation (Hildebrandt et al. 2019).

SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF PROTEIN SYNTHESIS

Jesper Hoffmeyer (2008: 58–60) criticized the common view of biologists that genetic
information is simply a sequence of nucleotides in nucleic acids or sequence of amino
acids in proteins. The idea that information is a material thing (i.e. a sequence of
molecules), as advocated by Francis Crick (1958), is not compatible with semiotics, which
conceives information as a sign, message or speech that has a meaning. This meaning
is retrieved and/or constructed by the interpreting agent and, thus, agents may derive
different meanings from the same sign, depending on their needs, affordances and
context. Although meanings can be stored or transmitted by material sign vehicles, they
are not fully objective and not fully material. They are not fully objective, because they
are agency-dependent, and they are not fully material because they can be transferred/
translated into the next generation of signs with entirely different material components.
Meanings are not things but processes and relations2 (see Marais 2019), and, as processes,
BIOLOGY OF TRANSLATION: THE ROLE OF AGENTS 67

they are potentially infinite, because they are supported by potentially immortal lineages
of agents that use them.
The semiotization of molecular biology is possible by accepting that genetic sequences
are meaningful, and meaning is not a material thing, such as a protein molecule, but a
process, where proteins are constructed and then play functional roles. In this sense,
protein synthesis is, indeed a translation – a transfer of meanings from one material carrier
(mRNA) to another (protein). This kind of sign process is also known as endosemiosis,
because it occurs within the limits of the same organism, as opposed to communication
between organisms (Von Uexküll et al. 1993).
Protein synthesis is not, however, the end point of translation, because proteins play
important functions in the cell as either subagents, signs, or scaffolds. In this respect,
biological translation appears to be somewhat different from human linguistic translation,
where verbal signs are interpreted only by means of other signs that belong to the same
or different sign system (Jakobson 1959), and not by making new functional agents.
However, this difference can be downplayed if we take an alternative look at linguistic
translation as a (potentially endless) process of agency change. Translated texts can be
seen as the means to change the knowledge, psychology and behaviour of our fellow
humans who speak a different language. Thus, linguistic translation may eventually
produce a different generation of human agents. Moreover, these new human agents will
change their material and cultural environments that serve in the long term as scaffolds
for various human functions. This line of thinking reveals a similarity between linguistic
translation in humans and molecular translation in cells.
Acknowledging the similarity between linguistic translation in humans and molecular
translation in cells does not mean downplaying the obvious, crucial difference: molecular
translation is mechanistic, whereas linguistic translation is relational in the sense that
meanings are projected by agents to the outside world. Some philosophers might say
that mechanistic processes are not semiotic at all and, thus, it is fruitless to talk about the
semiotics of protein synthesis. The problem with this view is that life, with its protein
synthesis, is a product of adaptive evolution and includes meaningful innovations that
resemble human knowledge. Neither physical laws nor other, similar concepts, like
‘chemical evolution’, can sufficiently explain the origin and evolution of life. If the early
steps of evolution involved primitive heredity and natural selection, then the heredity
carriers were signs interpreted by primordial agents. Thus, the evolution of agents
driven by heredity and natural selection is not chemical but biological. According to
biosemiotics (see below), life and semiosis are coextensive. Following this thesis, I invite
readers to recognize that sign processes (semiosis) can exist even in agents that interpret
signs mechanistically, such as ribosomes. To distinguish it from mental semiosis, it is
called ‘protosemiosis’, following the terminology of Giorgio Prodi (1988). In addition to
ribosomes, natural protosemiotic agents include functional proteins, viruses (whose status
in the tree of life is still disputed) and bacteria, which are unquestionably alive (Sharov
and Vehkavaara 2015).
The action of biological mechanisms is often confused with abstract computation,
where predefined rules of change are applied deterministically at every step. In contrast
to abstract computation, living agents (even mechanistic ones) make mistakes and correct
them later, if possible. Many mistakes remain uncorrected, but organisms manage to
compensate their downstream effects, and even take some advantage of these mistakes
as a source of adaptability in changing conditions (Eigen and Schuster 1979). According
to the so-called new mechanistic philosophy, ‘[a] mechanism is a structure performing a
function in virtue of its component parts, component operations, and their organization’
68 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

(Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005: 423). In other words, a mechanism is a system whose
change can be explained (at least partially) by the dynamics of lower-level components.
Thus, mechanisms can be non-deterministic and adaptive.
Protosemiotic agency can be understood as a signal-response (or input-output) system,
where both inputs and outputs are internal, because protosemiotic agents have no
representations of the outer world. Bacteria do not ‘know’ that chemoreceptors become
activated by external attractant molecules (e.g. glucose) – they respond to the activation
of chemoreceptors as input. Similarly, bacteria can rotate flagella clockwise or counter-
clockwise, which causes either slow movement with turns, or fast and straight movement,
respectively. Bacteria control the direction of flagella rotation, depending on the activity
of chemoreceptors, and move towards higher concentration of attractants (Porter et al.
2011). This effect is called chemotaxis. However, bacteria do not ‘know’ that flagella
rotation causes their movement in space. They simply translate incoming signals into
responses via a genetically encoded program.
Biological translation can be illuminated by the semiotic theory of Charles Peirce,
who defined the sign as a triadic relation between a sign vehicle (representamen), which
represents an object, and the result of interpretation, which is called an interpretant (Peirce
1998: EP2.478).3 Peirce’s object can be a material entity denoted by a sign, though, more
often, it is an idea of an object or class of objects, which Peirce sometimes called the
ground of the representamen (Peirce 1932: CP2.228). The theory of Peirce was tailored
to mental interpretation, and it, thus, needs some adjustment if it is to be applied to
molecular-level processes. Protosemiotic agents receive signals (that play the role of sign
vehicles), but they have no capacity to perceive objects (Sharov and Vehkavaara 2015).
Instead, they interpret signals directly as actions without referencing objects.
Protosemiosis can be described as ‘know-how’ without ‘know-what’. Molecular
signs do have meanings, but these are utility meanings, rather than mental conceptual
meanings. Utility meanings are disjointed, because each step of translation captures only
a fragment of the meaning. For example, a ribosome makes proteins without considering
the following steps, such as protein folding, processing and protein function. Thus, the
full meaning of a gene is accessible only for external competent observers (e.g. humans)
and cannot be captured by a ribosome or any other protosemiotic agent.

PRAGMATICS OF PROTEINS
The events that ensue after protein synthesis can be called extended translation (or
interpretation). A protein is produced in the form of an unfolded peptide, which is not
functional. Folding and modification of proteins require direct assistance from various
molecular agents that chemically modify amino acids, establish disulphide bonds between
distant cysteine amino acids or cut the peptide at specific locations. Indirect assistance
includes making scaffolds, and homeostatic control of necessary physical conditions.
After processing, a protein becomes functional and can do one or multiple jobs in the cell.
For example, transcription factors are proteins that activate or repress the transcription
of genes. These proteins bind with high affinity to specific DNA motifs located, usually,
in the promoter of a gene. Then, they recruit RNA polymerase to the promoter and/or
activate it to start transcription. Repressors do the opposite: they either prevent binding
of the RNA polymerase or stop its progression. The action of transcription factors can
be modified by small molecules that play the role of chemical signals. For example, in
bacteria, a small cAMP molecule binds to the cAMP receptor protein, which, in turn,
activates the transcription of genes responsible for lactose metabolism (Lodish et al.
BIOLOGY OF TRANSLATION: THE ROLE OF AGENTS 69

2000). A special protein, adenylyl cyclase, which is an agent that converts ATP molecules
into cAMP, is produced inside cells in response to signals that indicate the lack of energy.
Proteins and protein complexes can perform intricate sign-regulated functions.
Bacterial chemoreceptors are transmembrane proteins, which are activated by external
stimuli (attractants or repellents) on the outer side, and this change is followed by
generating or activating internal chemical signals (called secondary messengers) on the
inner side. Secondary messengers, such as activated kinases, in turn, activate transcription
factors, which regulate transcription of genes in the bacterial chromosome. In addition
to this main function, chemoreceptor proteins regulate their own sensitivity to external
stimuli via interaction with other enzymes, which attach or remove methyl groups at
multiple glutamic acid residues in the inner part of chemoreceptors (Porter et al. 2011).
After stimulation, the chemoreceptor is methylated and its sensitivity declines, whereas
unstimulated chemoreceptors are demethylated and their sensitivity is restored. This
mechanism allows bacteria to detect gradients of external stimuli by responding to its
increasing or decreasing concentration.
Molecular sign processes demonstrate an important role of agents. A ribosome is the
major molecular agent that performs translation, whereas transcription factors and RNA
polymerase are the molecular agents responsible for transcription. Following Peirce,
the role of agency was neglected in semiotics. Peirce introduced a triadic sign relation
(sign vehicle–object–interpretant) with no place for the agent (or interpreter). According
to Peirce, an interpretant becomes the next sign vehicle, which is interpreted further
(Figure 4.1a).

FIGURE 4.1 Structure of a semiotic process. (a) According to Peirce, a sign is associated with
an object and communicates the form/meaning to the interpretant, which becomes a new
sign that is interpreted further (e.g. by the same interpreter). (b) In protosemiosis, an agent
does not perceive an object (e.g. a metabolite and its function), but interprets signs directly as
actions (although the agent, sign and object are historically bound). An interpretant of one sign
becomes an agent that interprets other signs, which in turn change their semiotic role to agents
or signs. Historical relations are not shown for second-order interpretations.
70 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

The role of agents in semiosis, however, was emphasized by Charles Morris, who
can be considered one of the predecessors of biosemiotics (Favareau 2010: 150–5). He
suggested including the interpreter (or agent) as the fourth component of the original
triadic sign relation formulated by Peirce (Morris 1971). I consider the agent to be a
core component of a sign relation, because an agent interprets a sign and generates an
interpretant. As discussed above, protosemiotic agents cannot perceive or contemplate
objects. However, objects are still present in the sign relation. For example, bacterial
chemotaxis has emerged in evolution due to the presence of glucose in the environment,
which has shaped the evolution of bacteria for billions of years. Glucose availability has
an imprint in the bacterial genome, which can be viewed as a simple version of an ‘idea’ or
a ‘ground’, as advocated by Peirce. Thus, two timescales are combined in a sign relation:
real time and historical time (i.e. evolutionary) (Sharov and Tønnessen 2021: 199, 201).
Historical relations include adaptation of bacterial metabolism to use glucose (agent-
object), adaptation of membrane receptors to bind specifically to glucose (object-sign) and
developing mechanisms for interpretation of the signal (sign-agent). All these historical
relations are bidirectional, because they are mediated by repeated mutual interactions
(e.g. differential survival of bacteria modified their genome composition, which, in turn,
changed bacterial interaction with glucose).
Proteins are interpretants in the process of their synthesis; after folding and processing
they become agents that do not necessary play the role of signs. As agents, they perform
translation/interpretation functions on their own, and the products of interpretation (i.e.
interpretants) can be other agents or other signs (Figure 4.1b).
The main difference between agents and signs is that agents act, whereas signs signify.
In other words, agents have a power to act (i.e. they usually carry free energy to empower
actions) and use signs as information-carrying tools. Agents control their activities by
interpreting signs. The majority of agents carry at least some internal signs. In addition,
agents can be external signs for other agents. The role of interpreting agency is active and,
therefore, more important than signification.
Production of functional proteins is a goal-directed process targeted at maintenance of
identity, survival and reproduction of living cells, which is called autopoiesis. The notion of
autopoiesis was proposed by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela
(1980) to denote systems capable of recursive self-maintenance and self-reproduction.
Autopoiesis implies a complete self-referential closure, because any substantial deficiency
in self-maintenance and self-reproduction may break future functionality of the system,
making it non-recursive. Moreover, autopoietic systems live in changing environments
and, therefore, require robustness and adaptability to persist. Thus, their self-referential
closure expands beyond their actual state and function, into the domain of potential states
and potential functions that may appear useful in changed environments. The theory of
autopoiesis is close to other concepts developed independently and almost simultaneously,
such as the metabolism-repair systems of Robert Rosen (1972), the hypercycle of Eigen
and Schuster (1979) and the chemoton of Tibor Gánti (2003[1971]).
The main merit of the notion of autopoiesis and related theories lies in the material
grounding of goal-directedness in living organisms. Indeed, circular causation and self-
referential closure explain homeostasis and adaptability in changing environments. The
limitation of this approach lies in avoiding the notions of signification and meaning. In
other words, autopoiesis failed to incorporate semiotics as a core component. In addition,
in being connected to the methodology of constructivism, Maturana and Varela share the
BIOLOGY OF TRANSLATION: THE ROLE OF AGENTS 71

non-representational position that is typical for radical constructivism (Von Glasersfeld

1984). Full integration of biology with semiotics emerged only within the methodology
of biosemiotics (see section on biosemiotics below).
The notions of identity and goal-directedness can be applied to agents at different levels
of organization, including the subcellular level, whereas autopoiesis is observed only at
the level of cells and higher. Applying this logic to molecular agents, the pragmatics of
proteins can be seen in preserving and developing their identity. This idea seems to be
a promising replacement for the neo-Darwinian concept of the selfish gene (Dawkins
1976). Proteins are perishable and, thus, their identity can be preserved only if they are
replaced by new, identical proteins. Proteins cannot be copied directly and, thus, they rely
on another strategy, which is utilizing nucleic acids (e.g. DNA) to encode instructions for
their synthesis. DNA can be copied via template-guided replication and, thus, proteins
have to support this process either directly (e.g. DNA polymerase protein) or indirectly,
by performing other functions that, in the long run, contribute to the replication of DNA.4
In addition, each protein needs to support other processes that are necessary for protein
synthesis, such as transcription, production of ribosomes and tRNA. In this way, a simple
task of preserving and developing protein identity unfolds into a complex cooperation
network with other components within a cell. The function of this network eventually
contributes to the preservation and development of the identity of a higher-level agent,
which is a cell. This semiotic link can be seen as an extended translation of proteins into
cell identity. In multicellular organisms, the identity of cells depends on the identity of
tissues, organs and whole organisms. Thus, the pragmatics of proteins becomes integrated
not only with the pragmatics of a cell but also with organism goals.

HIGHER-LEVEL TRANSLATION PROCESSES IN

NON-HUMAN ORGANISMS
This section presents an overview of translation processes above the molecular level.
According to Hoffmeyer (2003: 329), ‘Natural translation is not a macro-level process
but a process, which is played out by individual entities at many levels from single cells
to organisms or even populations and perhaps ecosystems.’ Here, I discuss the following
examples: embryo development, immune system, nervous system and ecological
interactions between organisms.

Embryo development
The development of animal embryos is regulated by various signalling molecules, such as
growth factors and hormones. Hormones are typically produced by specialized glands,
secreted into the bloodstream, and affect all responsive cells in the body, whereas growth
factors can be produced by other tissue types, many of which are secreted into the
intracellular space and affect only neighbouring cells. These signalling molecules can be
seen as messages by which cells ‘communicate’ with each other. However, this metaphor
can be misleading, because human messages are based on language, where each word is
a symbol with a conventionally defined meaning. Thus, communication between cells
via chemical signals is better compared to non-verbal human signs, such as a smile, wink
or look. The question is: How are chemical signals translated by cells to guide for their
growth, reproduction, movement, differentiation or apoptosis (programmed death)?
72 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

All cells in the embryo are descendants of a single cell, which is a fertilized egg, and
they all carry the same genome. If the meanings of chemical signals were determined
by the genome, then all cells would respond similarly to each chemical signal. Such a
response would result in a structureless ball of cells, rather than an embryo. Life solves
this problem by using epigenetic factors, such as gene expression, protein synthesis and
transport, constructing cell components and organelles, and activating or silencing specific
regions of the genome. A cell needs a specific configuration of epigenetic factors to be
able to respond to a certain developmental signal, and this capacity is called competence
(Gilbert 2016). Competence requires the presence of receptor molecules, a functional
signal transduction pathway from receptors to the activation of transcription factor genes
in the nucleus, and synthesis of transcription factor proteins that, in turn, activate other
developmental genes (e.g. heart-specific or skin-specific genes) in a context-specific way.
As the fertilized egg starts dividing, daughter cells receive identical copies of
chromosomes, though the cells are not epigenetically identical. The symmetry is
initially broken by factors such as the point of spermatozoid entry and/or distribution
of yolk. Additional epigenetic heterogeneity is achieved by random activation of a
number of genes. The signalling network of cells appears unstable, because some signals
propagate via local self-amplifying effects, and send the embryo into its journey along its
development trajectory. Conrad Waddington (1957; 1968) pictured this process as a ball
rolling downhill in a complex epigenetic landscape. Valleys in this landscape can branch,
thereby creating multiple choices for downstream differentiation. Cells select their path
at these branching points depending on local conditions, such as the composition of
developmental signals. In addition, the whole epigenetic landscape can be reshaped by the
expression of certain transcription factors with strong activation or repression capacities.
Scott Gilbert (2016: 51) described this process: ‘Developmental signals are interpreted
differently depending on the previous history of the responding cell. Thus, there is a
context for the reception of a signal.’ Moreover, the same signal may have entirely
different effects in cells with a distinct epigenetic history: ‘Paracrine factors such as BMP4
can induce apoptosis, proliferation, or differentiation depending upon the history of the
responding cells’ (Gilbert 2016: 51). Thus, embryonic cells do not translate (interpret)
individual signals, but the sequence of all signals received, starting from the egg. This
sequence can also include sensing of external factors, such as temperature, diet or the
presence of competitors (Gilbert 2016).
Semiosis of embryo development can be summarized as a scaffold-based interpretation
with a dual process of scaffold-following and scaffold construction, where the scaffold
is the unfolding embryo morphology, together with the epigenetic state of each part. All
signals – genetic, epigenetic and environmental – are processed dynamically, following
the bends of the scaffold. At the same time, the interpretation of these signals updates the
shape of the scaffold by adding to or modifying its individual elements.

Immune system
The function of the immune system is to defend the organism from infection. Thus,
specialized immune cells called B-cells and T-cells emerged in evolution; they can detect
and facilitate destruction of foreign agents and their components. For example, the
function of B-cells is to produce antibodies, which are proteins that can specifically bind
to fragments of foreign macro molecules (e.g. proteins, polysaccharides, nucleic acids);
these fragments are called antigens. After binding, antibodies deactivate foreign agents
BIOLOGY OF TRANSLATION: THE ROLE OF AGENTS 73

and molecules and/or promote their destruction. Such an adaptive immune response
represents a distributed semiotic system that ‘learns’ to attack foreign antigens and
simultaneously spares the organism’s own components. Foreign antigens are recognized
as shapes (including geometry, patterns of hydrophobicity, and/or charge) and, thus, the
goal of adaptive immunity is to translate these shapes into complementary shapes of
protein receptors and antibodies that can tightly bind to antigens.
In contrast to code-based protein synthesis and scaffold-based embryo development,
immune translation is based on random trials and errors. Both B-cells and T-cells
have special immune receptors encoded by genes that are subject to intensive random
modification and reshuffling during early maturation of these cells. Thus, each clone
of B-cells and T-cells has a unique structure of their immune receptors on the outer
membrane surface (Lodish et al. 2000). ‘Learning’ occurs via negative and positive
selection of these clones, which is regulated via feedback from receptors’ binding
capacity. Young, ‘inexperienced’ B-cells – located first in the bone marrow and then in the
spleen – and T-cells – located in the thymus – first ‘learn’ not to respond to self antigens.
This is done by eliminating those cells, whose immune receptors bind to self antigens that
are abundant in the passing blood. Note that here we use the word ‘learning’ figuratively,
because immune cells cannot change their receptor genes after they were modified in
early development. After this negative selection, immune cells are harmless to the self,
but they can be lethal to invaders. Semiotically, this selection process has been described
as building ‘an expected iconic absence’ (Hoffmeyer 2008: 237). In particular, references
to potentially harmful microbes (Hoffmeyer calls it ‘other-reference’) emerge via negative
selection against self-reference.
Mature immune cells are released in the bloodstream, but they are still ‘naïve’ in the
sense that they have not encountered any foreign antigens. Encountering an antigen that
can be bound by immune receptors is the turning point in the fate of immune cells that
makes them functional; this process is called activation. There are two major mechanisms
of activation: via encountering either the raw antigen, or via encountering the antigen
that has been already processed by another cell and then ‘presented’ on its surface,
together with immune protein called major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II
molecule (Lodish et al. 2000). Several cell types have the capacity to present antigens on
their surface, including B-cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells. These cells internalize
antigens by either phagocytosis (macrophages) or endocytosis (B cells), breaking the
antigen into fragments and displaying them on the outer membrane surface attached to
class II MHC protein. Activation of B-cells and T-cells via antigen-presenting cells is highly
specific and, thus, it is the major component of the adaptive immune response. Activated
B-cells start producing antibodies, which are exact copies of surface receptors used for cell
activation; thus, they are specifically targeted at detected foreign antigens. In addition,
they divide rapidly to amplify their effect. The population of T-cells is heterogeneous,
and includes multiple subtypes. One subtype is called T-helpers because these cells help to
mobilize other immune cells. Once activated, they divide and secrete cytokines, which are
signalling molecules that stimulate the division of various types of immune cells. Another
important subtype of T-cells is called killer T-cells, which specialize in destroying virus-
infected cells.
Activated immune cells keep dividing, supporting a massive response against infection.
After pathogenic bacteria or viruses are eliminated, most immune cells die, though a
small number of B-cells and T-cells persist for a long time to protect an organism against
74 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

repeated infection by the same kind of pathogen. They are called memory-cells, and
support a long-term immunity against many diseases.

Nervous system
Neural signals are the fastest in the organism (from 0.61 m/s for pain to c. 100 m/s
for muscle contraction signals). Thus, neural signalling became the most important
information channel in animals, which need rapid sensing and movement for their survival.
The nervous system consists of nerve cells, called neurons, which are connected by cell
projections of two types: axons and dendrites. Dendrites carry incoming neural signals,
whereas axons transmit outgoing signals. The axon often branches near the end, and each
branch terminates with a synapse at the dendrite surface of another neuron, or on the
membrane of a responding (e.g. muscle) cell. Synapses can be seen as miniature chemical
reactors controlled by incoming electrical and chemical signals. The electrical signal is
a wave of membrane depolarization, and chemical signals, called neurotransmitters,
include excitatory factors, such as acetylcholine and glutamate, and repressive factors,
such as GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid).
The function of synapses is not only to transfer electric impulses from one neuron
to another but also to regulate the strength of connection – a phenomenon known as
synaptic plasticity. Regulation effects include the long-term potentiation (strengthening
of synapses after recent episodes of their activity), long-term depression (weakening of
synapses after intensive activity) as well as the Hebbian rule of signal association. Long-
term potentiation usually happens if the signal is relatively weak, but it is beneficial for
the organism. In contrast, long-term depression is employed to reduce the effect of signals
that are too strong, or unneeded. The Hebbian rule is, in short, described as ‘neurons wire
together if they fire together’ (Lowel and Singer 1992); it is assumed that this explains
the phenomenon of associative learning. Hebb wrote, ‘The general idea is an old one,
that any two cells or systems of cells that are repeatedly active at the same time will tend
to become “associated” so that activity in one facilitates activity in the other’ (1949: 70).
Following this rule, synapse connections between two neurons should become stronger
(and/or more numerous) if these neurons tend to fire simultaneously.
The function of the nervous system is currently pictured as the exchange of signals
between neurons. The passage of signals through a synapse from one neuron to another is
the lowest-level process of neural translation. Available models of synaptic plasticity can
explain the function of individual reflexes; however, they are not sufficient for explaining
higher-level neural processes. Even the functions of a single neuron are not clear. Each
neuron has c. 7,000 synapses, on average; thus, it can receive many input signals coming
from multiple neurons either simultaneously or sequentially in short time intervals. The
results of such complex stimulation are not clear. Computer models of neural networks
are still not sufficiently realistic and, thus, cannot reliably predict higher-level processes
in the brain. In particular, neural grounding of mental meanings remains elusive, because
we cannot translate neural signals into the content of human thinking.

Behaviour and Ecology

Translation processes are abundant in animal behaviour and ecological interactions. In this
case, the interpreting agents are whole organisms. The simplest behaviours are reflexes
that translate stimuli into specific activities. For example, gypsy moth males respond to
BIOLOGY OF TRANSLATION: THE ROLE OF AGENTS 75

the sex pheromone emitted by females by flying against the wind flow. This reflex is
innate, but it can be adjusted by additional factors, such as light, wind and concentration
of pheromone. A more complex reflex is the conditioning discovered by Ivan Pavlov,
which is established by associative learning within the individual lifespan.
Complex behaviours may include learning by both participants of communication:
signal producer and signal receiver. It has been shown that birds memorize the song
pattern of their parents and then learn to imitate this pattern in their own vocalization
(Konishi 2010). Other examples involve inter-species communication: a bird luring the
predator away from the nest by pretending that it cannot fly, or the hare-fox interaction,
in which a hare signals that it has spotted the fox by making itself clearly visible (standing
straight with ears erect). The beneficial effect of hare behaviour is explained by the fact
that hares can run faster than foxes and, thus, a fox would not chase the hare if it has been
spotted. This gives the hare a chance to save energy by making a sign (Holley 1993). In
these two examples, there is a two-level translation: first, the responding animal translates
the behaviour of its partner and, second, the signalling animal anticipates this translation
and adjusts its behaviour to evoke the corresponding behaviour of the first animal.
In semiotic terms, organisms translate various kinds of natural patterns and correlations
into their own affordances and habits. Hoffmeyer expressed this idea as follows: ‘Each
new habit, whether based on learning or genetic specification, exposes the organisms to
new challenges either directly or indirectly through the unending chain of translations’
(2003: 338). Communication between species is, then, a ‘translation between Umwelten’,
as formulated by Kull and Torop (2003). Such translation may link habits and cognitive
models of one kind of organism with certain habits and models of another kind of
organism. It can be mutually beneficial (e.g. in the interaction of a cat and its human
owner) or antagonistic (e.g. between prey and predator).

BIOSEMIOTICS: THE AGENTIAL APPROACH TO

SIGNS, MEANING AND TRANSLATION
The title of this chapter, ‘The Biology of Translation’, points to an obvious, but yet not
fully comprehended idea that language is a biological phenomenon. Speaking, interpreting,
writing and translating are living functions. Evolutionary theory suggests that all new living
functions emerge as modifications and combinations of ancestral functions. Thus, human
language presumably emerged from elements of animal cognition and communication.
To understand human cognition, it is best to see it in the evolutionary perspective as
an advanced form of agency – the tip of the iceberg of biological organization that
emerged from self-reproducing molecular complexes at the origin of life, and continued
in prokaryote cells, eukaryote cells, early multicellular animals, fish, reptiles, mammals
and humans (Sharov 2018). To understand advanced agency, we need to consider what
agency is in general – and this brings us to biosemiotics.
Biosemiotics is an interdisciplinary science that integrates biology with semiotics,
which is a theory of meaning and signification (Anderson et al. 1984; Sebeok and
Umiker-Sebeok 1992; Hoffmeyer 1996; 2008). The main principle of biosemiotics is
that life and semiosis are coextensive. All living organisms are multilevel semiotic agents.
Cells use molecular agents to store, replicate and interpret hereditary signs organized
in the genome and epigenetic units. Tissues, organs and body parts communicate via
humoral stimuli and neural signals. The brains of animals translate the incoming sensory
76 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

signs into meaningful phenomena. Organisms communicate via chemical and acoustic
signs. Humans developed complex symbolic languages for communication and created
technology that supports communication and computation.
Biosemiotics proposes three important changes to partitioning of human knowledge.
First, the humanities have to be expanded beyond humans.5 The scientific community
is ready to accept that animals have cognition and emotions that are, in many respects,
similar to those in humans. Animals easily recognize types of objects and associate them
with functions. Second, following the logic of the new mechanistic philosophy (Bechtel
and Abrahamsen 2005), the term ‘mechanism’ can be used in biosemiotics to describe
simple interpretation processes (e.g. translation) at the level of macromolecules and
molecule complexes in living cells. Many molecular processes in living cells are meaningful
and should be analysed not only by physics and chemistry but also by semiotics. And,
third, biosemiotics proposes to expand science (and, first of all, the biology of mind and
cognition) beyond mechanisms (Henning and Scarfe 2009).
Jakob von Uexküll was one of the founders of biosemiotic ideas (although he did not
use the term). He claimed that organisms within a species develop their own model of
their environment, called an Umwelt (Von Uexküll 1982 [1940]). Animals view outside
objects as meaningful components of their behaviour patterns: food sources, building
materials, shelters, or navigation landmarks. Such models of the environment may even
be individual-specific, because each animal has its unique experience and habits, such
as navigation and activity within the territory adjacent to its nest (Von Uexküll 1957).
Organisms develop their models of the environment together with the development
of the body, and body parts (e.g. sense organs and effectors) integrated by the internal
communication system (e.g. nerves and brain), which serve as a scaffold for Umwelt-
building to support its heritable components. In addition, Umwelt formation is shaped by
the environment via sensorial inputs, showing, among other factors, the degree of success
in various behaviours, including interaction with other agents.
Biosemiotics substantially enriches the concept of goal directedness. In contrast
to neo-Darwinism, it views survival and reproduction as surrogate goals. According
to biosemiotics, the goal of agents is to preserve their identity by following habits in
development and behaviour, whereas survival and reproduction are simply by-products
of these habits. In his later writings, Varela, who developed the theory of enactivism,
emphasizes the importance of identity; he writes, ’Organisms are fundamentally a
process of constitution of an identity’ (Varela 1997: 73). Varela did not recognize that
the identity of organisms is semiotic, although he correctly mentions that identity is based
not on substance but on movement or process (Varela 1991: 80). Consequently, natural
selection is also a surrogate notion, because nature is not an agent and cannot kill or
produce organisms (Sharov 2016c).6 The real meaning of selection is that organisms select
their actions by making informed choices. Agents whose choices preserve, develop and
multiply their identity become more abundant and diverse, whereas agents whose choices
result in the decline or disintegration of identity vanish. In particular, death is a loss of
identity, and heritable self-reproduction ensures preservation and spread of identity.
In this chapter, I explored one aspect of biosemiotics, which is ‘translation’ in
living organisms – interpretation of natural biological signs by means of other signs.
My main idea is that the process of translation should be considered in the context of
agency, where agents perform translation and the result of translation irreversibly and
adaptively transforms properties of agents in the future. This logic is equally applicable
to biological evolution, embryo development, immune competence, cognitive learning,
and development of sociality and human culture. Translation of natural biological signs
BIOLOGY OF TRANSLATION: THE ROLE OF AGENTS 77

and human verbal signs has common properties that drive semiotic development and
evolution at various time scales and diverse levels of organization of the living world,
which justifies the proposal of Kobus Marais (2019) to develop a general semiotic theory
of translation that can potentially narrow the nature/culture gap and facilitate integration
of natural sciences with humanities.

CONCLUSION
In biology, translation denotes lower-level or mostly automated sign processes that
tend to preserve the incipient meanings. Translation is a biological function of living
organisms and, as such, should be considered in evolutionary context, as it is assumed in
biosemiotics. At the molecular level, translation is represented by two sequential steps
of processing the hereditary information: transcription – copying of DNA sequence
to RNA – and translation – synthesis of proteins programmed by the RNA sequence.
However, protein synthesis is not the end of the biological translation chain. Extended
steps of translation include protein folding, transport and functional activities of
proteins. Proteins become agents that perform translation/interpretation functions on
their own. In contrast to Peirce’s semiotics, molecular protosemiosis does not include
perception of objects, and interpretants can be either signs or agents in the ensuing
interpretation steps. The difference between agents and signs is that agents act, and signs
signify. These roles are often combined; however, in this case, the role of interpreting
agency is active and, therefore, more important than signification. Biological translation
is a goal-directed process targeted at maintaining the identity of living cells and whole
organisms.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank Kobus Marais (University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa),
Kalevi Kull (University of Tartu) and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments.
I declare no conflict of interest.

NOTES
1 ATP is adenosine 5’-triphosphate, and ADP is adenosine diphosphate.
2 Sign relation represents a type of sign process that is habitually performed by a semiotic
agent (or type of agents).
3 In citations, EP or CP is followed by the volume, and paragraph number of Peirce (1998) or
Peirce (1932), respectively.
4 This does not mean that proteins historically appeared before nucleic acids. Instead, both
proteins and nucleic acids emerged in the evolution of more primitive molecular agents,
possibly resembling extant coenzymes (Sharov 2016b).
5 This notion is being developed within the post-humanities programme (Marchesini 2017).
6 Nature usually implies the environment, and environment can include other organisms,
which are agents. These agents can be harmful or beneficial to the organism under
consideration. However, being killed by a predator does not mean being killed by nature.
78 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

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80
 CHAPTER FIVE

Translation in Medical
Science and Biomedical
Research
STEVE REID AND DELVA SHAMLEY

INTRODUCTION
Imagine two travellers from an exotic foreign land arriving on your doorstep. They
know a few words of greeting in your language, but nothing more, and need to be fed
and accommodated, which you agree to do. As they unpack their suitcases, they display
a series of amazing contraptions that look intriguing, but potentially dangerous. For
lack of a common language, they cannot explain what these devices are, but they are
clearly precious and extremely delicately made. A conversation is needed, ideally with
an interpreter to assist, but none is available. One traveller eagerly tries to help you
understand that the devices are intended as gifts, and uses gesticulations and scattered
words. The attitude of the other traveller, however, despite the language barrier, is
condescending, and he is unwilling to even try and explain any of his objects. He gives
the distinct impression that he regards his land of origin as superior to your own.
Biomedical scientists are like these travellers, with their unintelligible languages and
strange habits; they bring extraordinary gifts that are potentially helpful to us all, but
which need to be interpreted and explained so that we can understand and use them.
Translation is needed, initially to explain how the contraptions work, and to turn the
curious devices to advantage by adapting them for local use, in ways that are acceptable
and familiar. But more than translation is needed: In the process of the transfer of
understanding, one needs to try the devices out, feel how they move and work out how
they could be useful in one’s own context. Furthermore, an attitudinal change is needed,
to overcome the suspicion and the assumed hierarchy of knowledge in interdisciplinary
spaces: A certain degree of generosity and reciprocal humility is required when entering
‘foreign territory’. A mutually productive exchange happens as a product of adequate
translation in its widest sense (designated by inverted commas from here on), with
adjustments and compromises that may take place over a period of time.
Processes of ‘translation’ in biomedicine apply to the attempt to shift knowledge from
the laboratory to patient care, from global ‘north’ to ‘south’, from university to community,
from teaching hospital to peripheral hospitals and from urban to rural situations.
However, the protocols devised in well-resourced academic hospitals, derived from the
so-called best available evidence in the scientific literature, which is overwhelmingly
82 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

North American and European in origin, are often inappropriate and difficult to translate
into medical practice in Africa, as they make so many assumptions regarding resources,
relationships and systems. Primary care, or first-level health care, in particular, is at the
mercy of policies, guidelines and protocols developed out of context in more sophisticated
and controlled settings. There are very few ‘interpreters’ who understand both worlds in
sufficient detail to allow the respective richness of knowledge and insight to be shared.

HOW TRANSLATION IS UNDERSTOOD IN

BIOMEDICAL SCIENCE AND PRACTICE
Translation as well as translational research is a well-described process in biomedical
science and practice, but there is no single agreed definition (Krueger et al. 2019). Various
authors have attempted to demarcate the field through declarative statements, but these
have been challenged by different models, as described below.
The phrase ‘from bench to bedside’ explains translation in biomedical science in terms of
a simplistic dichotomy between discoveries in a laboratory (‘in vitro’ studies), also termed
‘basic science’, that leads to new treatments of patients in a hospital (‘in vivo’ studies),
which is also known as ‘applied science’. While useful as a starting point, it oversimplifies
the process. The translation of biomedical research into clinical practice has become a
field of practice in itself, which uses the tools of ‘implementation science’ that allow
laboratory discoveries and innovations to bring about real changes and improvements in
health care and health systems throughout the world. A simple continuum could, thus,
be described as proceeding from ‘basic’ to ‘applied’ to ‘implementation’ science, in the
laboratory, hospital and community, respectively. This is much more than a linguistic
continuum: It describes the progression from highly controlled scientific experiments,
through less predictable situations with real patients, to highly complex environments in
the real lives of people and communities, as this chapter will reveal.
The process of translation is not without its own challenges, however. As in the case
of HIV and AIDS, as well as tuberculosis (TB), a persistent minority of patients with the
disease do not receive or continue with the therapy that could make them well. The reasons
for this treatment ‘gap’ are numerous, including not only side effects and drug resistance
but also social and behavioural issues, such as stigma, the cost of treatment, including
transport, the acceptability of health care and patient adherence to prescriptions. All of
these issues can be regarded as failures of ‘translation’, in that, while effective remedies
may exist in the form of drugs or treatments, they are surprisingly frequently not found
to be effective in the complex realities of people’s lives.

The continuum: Phases of translation

Translation of biomedical research has been described in a linear fashion in terms of
stages that are sequential and structured. Numerous models and iterations have been
proposed, illustrating the fact that there is no single understanding, definition or even
terminology.
Early models described two main phases, from ‘basic biomedical research’ to ‘clinical
science and knowledge’, as illustrated in Figure 5.1 (Schwartz and Macomer 2017) and
further described by Sung et al. (2003).
A more complicated, multi-step model was proposed by Dzau et al. (2010), known as
the Duke Medicine model for translation. It covers translation from discovery and proof
of concept, through clinical research and adoption, to global health outcomes.
TRANSLATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE 83

FIGURE 5.1 Schematic transitions from the ‘Bench to Bedside’ (T1) and ‘Bedside to Practice’
(T2) translational medical research and development model. (Reproduced from Schwartz and
Macomer, 2017.)

Subsequently, Thornicroft et al. (2011) describe five phases in the ‘translational

continuum’ related to pharmacological drug discoveries, which are the most archetypical
form of biomedical translation:
0: Basic science
1: Early human studies
2: Early clinical trials
3: Late clinical trials
4: Implementation
These phases are illustrated in Figure 5.2.

FIGURE 5.2 Operational challenges for translational research and medicine. (From Fernandez-
Moure, (2016), adapted from Blumberg et al. Harvard Catalyst Website: (https://catalyst.
harvard.edu/).
84 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Furthermore, Thornicroft et al. (2011) describe three distinct translational ‘blocks’

between phases of translation. These obstacles represent discrete successive levels of
complexity that may find analogies in fields other than biomedical research.
Extending the model to a population level, Krueger et al. (2019) reviewed four phases
as follows:

●● T1: Translating lab results into new diagnostics, therapy and prevention and
their first testing in humans
●● T2: Translating clinical studies into everyday clinical practice and health
decision-making
●● T3: Ensuring that evidence-based interventions effectively reach those whose
health can benefit
●● T4: Proactively communicating scientific accomplishments to stakeholders: the
public, industry and government

These models demonstrate a progressively more complicated, but still linear process,
in which the sequential steps represent distinct activities or obstacles that need to be
addressed.

Successes of biomedical translation

Biomedical discoveries and drug developments have been translated remarkably
successfully in certain areas of health care. Advances in antimicrobial drugs, for
example, have drastically curtailed the devastating effects on populations of infectious
diseases such as TB, HIV and malaria, and vaccines have eliminated a large number
of diseases that previously carried a high mortality, such as diphtheria, polio and
smallpox. Extraordinary advances in cancer drugs and radiotherapy over the past
few decades have transformed the impact of many cancers, from a terminal diagnosis
to a chronic one that can be managed on an ongoing basis. When carefully and
systematically implemented, knowledge translation has been shown through a series of
randomized controlled trials to be effective in improving health outcomes in patients
and strengthening health systems in less developed countries (Fairall et al. 2015). The
Knowledge Translation Unit at the University of Cape Town is dedicated to this task
(see https://knowledgetranslation.co.za/).
The story of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in South Africa offers a comprehensive case
study of the multiple dimensions of biomedical translation (Abdool Karim & Abdool
Karim, 2010), starting with the novel drug development, and involving patents, pricing,
patient advocacy, stigma, national politics, major health system adaptations and a culture
change at community level, to ultimately create the largest antiretroviral programme in
the world, with 5.5 million people on ART.
The implementation of strict regulatory control of the development and marketing
of drugs and medical devices has led to safer translation to practice. Regulations of
trials are onerous processes that differ from country to country, but which provide
strong ethical, safety and legal oversight (World Health Organization 2002). The
need for their implementation has long been evident, to avoid rogue scientists abusing
access to populations of foreign countries for their own scientific benefit (Barnes and
Wallace 2017).
TRANSLATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE 85

CHALLENGES TO TRANSLATION
Barriers to translation include historical, social, economic, scientific, cultural and
organizational issues. This complexity has led to few clinical trial findings reaching
disease populations. The most common reason for this failure is the resource-intensive
design of the research projects, which is not replicable or affordable in the real-world
setting of health-care practice. A more recent and critical finding is that of the impact of
genetic variation on drug metabolism, called pharmacogenomics (Rollinson et al. 2020).
A drug developed in a specific population group is likely to be metabolized differently in
a different population group, which frequently leads to significant failure of the therapy,
or adverse drug reactions. As biomedical knowledge grows, so too does the complexity of
the challenge of translation into practice.

From controlled experiments to complex adaptive systems

Moving from the controlled environment of research laboratories to the complexities of
intersecting biological, social and financial systems in the real world is possibly the major
challenge of translation, and corresponds to the T3 and T4 phases described by Krueger
et al. (2019). Each real-world context contains a unique blend of influences, and yet the
drugs or other interventions are often propagated in a one-size-fits-all fashion. Some
degree of local adaptation is necessary for successful adoption of any intervention by
particular groups of patients or communities.
At a population level, a complex interplay of many different factors influences
actual health outcomes. For example, despite overwhelming evidence-based ‘proof’
from randomized controlled trials that they work for individuals, heart rehabilitation
programmes after myocardial infarcts have been spectacularly ineffective at a population
level (Clark et al. 2007: 517): ‘The approach used towards the prevention programmes
in this instance reflects core positivist assumptions in its lack of focus on unobservable
phenomena, its impoverished conception of the social, contextual and personal and its
reliance on a narrow body of empirical evidence.’
A useful review of the field, published by the Berlin Institute of Health (Blümel et al.
2015), concludes that there is no current common understanding of translational research
that corresponds with specific practices, but that a multitude of problems and goals are
addressed by referring to ‘translation’. They found scientific, economic, organizational,
moral-ethical, educational as well as policy dimensions to be important in framing the
debate, and broadly derived dimensions of the field either from a social science or from
a medical perspective.

Theoretical considerations
With regard to theoretical assumptions, complexity systems theory would appear
to be the most convenient framework to explain the shift away from linear thinking
(Walby 2007). The fundamental idea of complexity is that multiple parts of a system
interact with one another, continuously and in multiple ways, resulting in the emergence
of phenomena that are ‘more than the sum of its parts’, as originally described in
computer science (Holland 1992). The translation of scientific discoveries into workable
benefits in people’s lives requires a process of constant adaptation and adjustment along
the chain of actors and systems, leading to an equilibrium, which may itself be temporary.
86 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

This perspective finds obvious parallels in language translation with respect to the
continuous process of adaptation that is required in moving between languages.
At a broader level, the shift from positivist and structuralist views of the world in
the social sciences to relativist and post-structural perspectives over the last half century
has challenged natural scientists to examine their positions in society, and to make their
contributions ethically and fairly in relation to society as a whole. By bringing these
apparently competing paradigms together, the idea of critical realism is possibly the most
appropriate theoretical framework to integrate these diverse perspectives.
Roy Bhaskar, a philosopher who developed the theory of critical realism (Bhaskar
1975, 1998), describes our existence in terms of a ‘layered’ or ‘stratified’ reality, on
three levels: what is empirical, what is actual and what is real. Assuming that there is an
objective reality external to humankind, he insists that we should not conflate this reality
(ontology) with our experiences of it (epistemology), which is what he calls the ‘epistemic
fallacy’. Furthermore, critical realism distinguishes between ‘actual’ events that take place
in the world, on the one hand, and both the natural mechanisms and social structures
that he describes as ‘real’ and immutable, on the other. Far from being a philosophical
indulgence in semantics, this distinction is crucial: The so-called structural forces that
influence our lives are just as real as the ‘actual’ events that they bring about, and that
can be observed. Significantly, critical realists understand structures such as social class,
gender and race as no less real than the laws of physics for being invisible or intangible.
The importance of Bhaskar’s theory is that it avoids the trap of dualistic thinking between
the sciences and the humanities, by providing a framework that enables both subjective
and objective phenomena to be understood simultaneously, not exclusively.

MEETING THE CHALLENGES OF TRANSLATION

Delimitation of implementation
One response to the frustrations of translation is to circumscribe one’s engagement in the
field: Researchers remain firmly in their laboratories, and leave the implementation in the
messy world to others. Deliberately curtailing one’s adventure in a foreign land because
the experience, for example, of the food, music or accommodation is disconcerting and
unusual, is understandable but limiting. This has happened in the health sciences, as noted
by Flier and Loscalzo (2017), who describe the ‘cultural divide’ between laboratory-
bound scientists and hospital-based clinicians, which leads to scientific investigations
being ‘lost in translation’. They contend that, ironically, a redefinition of translational
research about a decade ago, as the ultimate formalism for all research, regardless of
whether it was basic or applied, led to a backlash that widened the divide, instead of
narrowing it. Exploring a foreign country and learning a foreign language is time-
consuming and demanding, so one has to decide how far to go – whether just enough to
get by or towards a fluency that allows for conversations that could elevate the whole
experience of travel to new levels.

Interdisciplinary research
A widespread limitation of biomedical knowledge is that it is highly specialized and
isolated within disciplines that have no ready mechanisms for sharing knowledge.
Each discipline has its own traditions, heroes, languages and norms, which are actively
TRANSLATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE 87

promoted and defended against imagined threats of dilution by other disciplines. Even
within the field of biomedical research itself, processes of translation are necessary to
enable wider audiences to understand very specialized areas of knowledge, through which
productive collaborations can occur.
This is clearly not a purely linguistic challenge. Finding common ground across
disciplinary boundaries requires acts of generosity (Herzog 2020), and taking time to
explain one’s field in simple terms to others from a field quite different from one’s own.
At the same time, a degree of ‘epistemic humility’ is required to accept when one does not
know enough about another field to engage in a discourse (Klein 1991). Arvidson (2005)
asserts that interdisciplinary study requires ‘values, traits and skills that are virtuous rather
than vicious’, as well as ‘the human capacity for reverence in the face of complexity’. It
is through this affective domain that a deeper and more generative process of translation
can take place. Without this mutual respect, reciprocity and adaptation, a productive
engagement cannot occur, and innovative ideas or possibilities will be stillborn.

The political economy of science

Translation can be regarded as a political act, in that it makes particular texts or medical
interventions, such as drugs, accessible to certain groups of people, by transporting
them across linguistic or technical boundaries. Which interventions are selected to
be translated, and which are suppressed, by whom, are political issues, because these
decisions are often the exclusive preserve of those in positions of power. The global
dynamics of access to Covid-19 vaccines is a good example of this. There is an inherent
power imbalance in medicine, because scientists and health professionals hold the power
of knowledge, while patients and populations can be kept in the dark about important
options or decisions. This clinical paternalism has been strongly challenged by patient
groups and a range of authors in the medical humanities. Foucault, in The Birth of the
Clinic (1975), developed the concept of ‘the medical gaze’; he describes how doctors tend
to select out the biomedical parts of the patients’ problems and ignore the rest. In doing
so, they modify the patient’s story, fitting it into a biomedical paradigm, while filtering
out non-biomedical material.
At a broader level, effective ‘translation’ of biomedical discoveries often requires
strong leadership, to create frameworks that bring together the role players in productive
relationships. Conversely, political ‘interference’ in science, as seen most dramatically in
the Covid-19 pandemic, can distort the scientific evidence and amplify or suppress certain
findings, depending on a host of external influences. False news is a recent phenomenon,
leading to false science which signals the increasing politicization of science and its
consequent loss of credibility in the public domain. To return to a previous example,
the refusal by the government to supply antiretroviral drugs in South Africa, regarded
by the then president and the Minister of Health as part of a conspiracy by Western
drug companies, is the most famous local example of direct political interference in
translational medicine (Abdool Karim and Abdool Karim 2010). Antiretroviral drugs,
which had been scientifically proven to be extremely effective in preventing death from
AIDS, were banned from use in the country by those in political power for a number of
years. It was only through legal action by the Treatment Action Campaign, which took
the Minister of Health to court, that the decision was overturned.
Glasgow and Emmons (2007) integrate disciplinary models (social, ecological,
medical) to develop recommendations for ensuring the study design pre-empts barriers
88 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

to translation to practice. These recommendations include the need to appreciate and

integrate multiple types of evidence, to include multiple outcomes, including contextual
factors, and to design multilevel programmes using systems and models from different
disciplines.
A useful conceptual framework for the science of implementation and dissemination
is proposed by Gonzales et al. (2012). It is similarly linear in nature, but acknowledges
the multiple interactions that need to occur. The translation of evidence into practice,
policy and population health is made operational through activities and relationships that
exist among stakeholder organizations, health-care delivery systems and individuals. The
process of translation of science into everyday practice now begins to look more complex
than a bidirectional interchange.

‘Street-level bureaucracy’ and the adoption of innovation

Lipsky (1980) describes how public service workers, in effect, function as policy decision-
makers, as they wield their considerable discretion in the day-to-day implementation of
public programmes. Lipsky coined the term ‘street-level bureaucrats’, to refer to those
who do the work of translation by simply ignoring some policies or instructions and
amplifying others to fit their situations, and argues that ‘policy implementation in the end
comes down to the people who actually implement it’. In the case of medicine, there is
considerable discretion amongst clinicians to interpret and modify clinical protocols or
guidelines according to their particular situations and frames of reference, and to tailor
the drug regimens and prescriptions to individual patients’ circumstances. For example,
rural practitioners seldom have the diagnostic tools available that are taken for granted
in large urban hospitals, such as CT or MRI scans, and often need to make a ‘best guess’
to adhere to clinical guidelines as far as possible. These adjustments are often regarded as
irresponsible by academic colleagues who do not understand the context, and the failure
of translation is labelled as ‘indolence and inefficiency on the part of practitioners’ (Julian
2004). This arrogance of attitude limits effective translation.
The science of complex systems is used by Plsek (2003) to understand the adoption
of innovations in health care, by emphasizing the receptivity of contexts for change. His
recommendations include the following:

●● We must learn and adapt as we go along.

●● While we can be informed by what worked elsewhere, we must take account of
local conditions when we implement change.
●● Patterns of thinking and behaviour are just as much a part of the systems as
structures and processes.
●● Spread of innovation is primarily a matter of knowledge sharing through social
networks.
●● There are nonlinear patterns in the social network that make some individuals
more essential than others for the spread of innovation.
●● The organizational context in relation to change can differ across organizations,
and this matters.
●● Spread is the result of the adoption process, not the other way around.

These suggestions have direct relevance for other fields of translation.

TRANSLATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE 89

Models of implementation science

Implementation science is commonly defined as ‘the scientific study of methods and
strategies to promote the uptake of interventions that have proven effective into routine
practice, with the aim of improving population health’ (Global Alliance for Chronic
Diseases 2020). Time has shown us that a foundation of good knowledge, or a proven
intervention, is insufficient to change practice or behaviour. Implementation science
focuses on testing how an intervention would work in real-world settings; it includes
exploring processes of implementation, effects of introducing the intervention into health
systems and promoting sustainability. Thus, it is about practice and behaviour change,
rather than pure knowledge production. It is the bridge between science and practice
and requires engagement with individuals, communities and health-care organizations
(Gonzales et al. 2013).
Many theories exist for implementation science, though they differ in terminologies
and definitions (Wensing 2015). Examples of terminology include translation,
dissemination, diffusion, synthesis and application. The diffusion of innovation theory
includes the sequence of categories of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late
majority and laggards (Rogers 2003). Damschroder et al. (2009) developed a consolidated
framework for implementation research (CFIR) model, which encompasses the common
constructs from published theories and enables researchers to select the constructs relevant
to their contexts. The CFIR model comprises five domains: the intervention, inner and
outer setting (context), the individuals involved and the implementation process.
A further three-phase model termed ‘contribution mapping’ is intended to ‘reveal
how to better anticipate, learn, communicate and align efforts to ultimately increase the
likelihood that a contribution is made to collective achievements’, thereby enhancing the
contribution of research to the overall outcomes. Although still essentially sequential,
this model indicates a greater degree of complexity in translation than its predecessors
described above.

FIGURE 5.3 The three-phase ‘contribution mapping’ model from Kok and Schuit (2012).
(Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution Licence 4.0.)
90 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

As economic pressure affects research funding, sponsors are increasingly looking

for evidence of value for money. This value is frequently seen in the impact of the
research, which, in many cases, is complex and prone to political and societal influences.
These influences may not be acting in the interests of the recipient of the impact, as
Greenhalgh et al. (2016) point out: ‘in policy making research evidence is rather more
often used conceptually (for general enlightenment) or symbolically (to justify a chosen
action) than instrumentally (feeding directly into a policy decision).’

Assessing impact
Current frameworks for assessing the impact of research can be grouped on the basis
of their conceptual and philosophical basis (payback, research impact, monetization,
social impact and related approaches and participatory impact model) with new models
emerging, including realist evaluations, contribution mapping and the SPIRIT Action
framework (Redman et al. 2015) (see Figure 5.4).
These frameworks emphasize engagement and capacity-building activities in
organizations, and acknowledge the messiness of and multiple influences on the policy

FIGURE 5.4 The SPIRIT action framework. (Reproduced from Redman et al., 2015, under
Creative Commons Attribution Licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.)
TRANSLATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE 91

process. It is not surprising that research on research impact is a growing field of work
under implementation science, and that selecting a framework for measuring impact will
depend on the reason for seeking to measure impact and the circumstances in question.
Furthermore, the cultural and socio-demographic features of a site should inform a
decision on the type of framework to be selected, to ensure relevance.

‘COMING HOME’
Feedback and implementation cycles
Language translation is usually conceptualized as a one-way process, from one language
into another, using words to transfer meanings from one context into the other. However,
it is clear from biomedical research not only that complexity makes this challenging but
that a further process is necessary to maximize the potential of any intervention, by
bringing the insights gained from community interactions back to the laboratory. The
analogy of returning from a journey into a foreign land is maintained in this model, akin
to a homecoming process or ritual that relates to the reasons and motivations with which
one set out in the first place.
This is a story about translation, and a homecoming (including ‘the chickens that came
home to roost’), to illustrate the roles of different frames of understanding a common
problem.
At each stage on the continuum of translation, an interpretation or judgement
is required, which is largely determined by the worldview of the participants at that
moment. The stages and phases of translational research outlined above, and which are
highly structured, arise from and are framed by the scientific method of reductionism,

A vignette
A 45-year-old Zulu man presented to a rural hospital near his traditional home in
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, severely ill with an acute abdomen. The doctor in the
emergency room made the diagnosis of a perforated peptic ulcer – a life-threatening
condition – and he was operated on immediately to close the hole in his stomach
wall. During his post-op recovery, the doctor tried to understand the source of the
patient’s stress, which had produced such an excess of stomach acid that it had
resulted in a perforation. The patient was adamant that his wife was poisoning him
through the food she cooked and fed him. On further enquiry, it emerged that the
patient had recently returned to his traditional home from his city lodgings, where
his mistress had recently given birth to his child. When his wife found out about this
situation after his return, relations between them had become tense.
Whether it was ‘poison’ from his wife, or excessive acid produced in his stomach from
the psychological tension in the marriage, or the tension that arose from a difference
in interpretation of the cause of his illness, is a matter of translation – whatever it
was called and however it was understood, the problem still needed to be resolved,
not only through surgery and anti-acid drugs but also through family therapy. In the
event, after the surgeon had played his part, a traditional healer was more successful
with the latter. Both interpretations were needed for a successful resolution.
92 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

which excludes confounding factors in the environment that could disrupt the linear
pattern of an experiment. In this sense, the scientific process is highly contrived, but
regarded by scientists as the ‘foundation’ or ‘home base’ of scientific truth. In real life,
multiple confounding factors impact on an individual or a situation simultaneously, and
results emerge at different times. A systems approach that accepts the truth of complexity
as something to be expected, rather than a nuisance to be diminished, is needed. Complex
adaptive systems, in which every part of a system affects every other part, is often seen as
a foreign land, whereas it is, in fact, the milieu in which we all live.
Recently, attention has been given to clinicians’ and communities’ feedback on
innovations, as the holders of different but equally important types of expertise (Stewart
et al. 2020). Several authors emphasize a two-way process of biomedical research vis-à-
vis practice. Practitioners need to give feedback to the generators of an innovation, so
that it can be improved, and in many cases, it is the practitioners themselves who identify
the need in the first place. Ridley (2015) argues that basic scientific advances can be the
consequence, rather than the cause, of applied technological advances.
In the arena of science communication, Kappel and Holmen (2019) contrast the
dissemination paradigm with the public participation paradigm, the latter viewing
dialogue and deliberation between the public, experts and decision-makers as the proper
way of engaging in science communication. ‘Science shops’, often attached to university
departments, were first established in the Netherlands in the 1970s, and provide
independent participatory research support in response to concerns experienced by civil
society, as a bottom-up approach to research (Wachelder 2003). The work of the ‘science
shops’ can be described as community-based research, with the aim of increasing both
public awareness and providing access to science and technology to laypeople or non-
profit organizations.

The learning health system

Ideally, biomedical researchers, clinicians, public health experts, patient advocates and
community members need to play their parts and see themselves as part of a health system
that learns together. The concept of the ‘learning organization’, which arose in industry
(Senge 1990), can be extended by the idea of a ‘learning health system’ to include a wide
range of role players in the translation of new medical discoveries, for the maximum
benefit of all those who are in need of them (Eric Bateman, personal communication
2020). This goes beyond a two-way linear process, to imply a series of simultaneous
multidirectional communications in a web of relationships, towards the common goal of
improving health and health care. Understanding and profiling a specific community or
population for a particular biomedical intervention could bring potential beneficiaries
who are not health professionals into direct contact with researchers and clinicians
throughout the research process. In this way, translation into final outcomes could be
integral to the process ab initio, rather than being an add-on to the end of a long chain of
steps that separates laboratory scientists from potential beneficiaries.

CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR

OTHER FIELDS OF STUDY
Conceptualizing translation not as a linear process but as an adaptive process within
complex systems, as has emerged in biomedical research over the past two decades,
could be useful to other fields. In our increasingly technological world, the extent of
TRANSLATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCE 93

translation, and exactly what needs to be translated versus what can remain hidden, such
as digital software code, is likely to be a feature of modern life. In the light of a more
interdisciplinary framework, we suggest that the transition from the highly segregated
and sequential structure of biomedical translation towards a more multidimensional
approach could be useful in many other fields of knowledge beyond language translation,
particularly those involving tightly discipline-bound areas of specialization.
Our unusual travellers, having established friendships and distributed their gifts in
foreign lands, return home themselves richer and wiser, understanding that we are all
connected and interdependent. We play with their contraptions, and after making a
few adaptations, find them surprisingly useful. Using yet-to-be-discovered technology
for transferring thoughts, we send our new friends our thanks, and tell them about the
improvements we have made.

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96
 PART II

Translation in the
Social Sciences
98
 CHAPTER SIX

Interlingual, Intralingual
and Intersemiotic
Translation in Law
AGNIESZKA DOCZEKALSKA AND ŁUCJA BIEL

INTRODUCTION
The objective of this chapter is to discuss the alternativeness of translation from the
perspective of legal studies, a disciplinary field that studies law – a binding system of
legal rules regulating social behaviours (cf. Harris 2016: 4–9). Our point of departure
is Jakobson’s broad understanding of translation as intralingual, interlingual and
intersemiotic translation, where
1. Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of
other signs of the same language.
2. Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal signs by
means of some other language.
3. Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by
means of signs of nonverbal sign systems (2000[1959]: 114).
First, law abounds with examples of interlingual translation – in international law,
in legal systems that use more than one language, and during contacts between legal
systems. Second, law relies on intralingual translation when one type of legal verbal sign
is translated into another legal sign at various stages of law-making and application.
Third, intersemiotic translation takes place when legal verbal signs are communicated
through visual or spatial signs. This chapter discusses these three types of translation,
and explores how they are conceptualized and used in the area of law, although the first
two – interlingual and intralingual translation – are discussed in more detail. First, we
overview historical developments and key ideas related to the use of mainly interlingual
translation for legal purposes, such as translation as a language right, legal transplants
and multilingual drafting. Next, we focus on intralingual translation connected with law-
making and application, that is, when policies are translated into law and when legal rules
are decoded from legal provisions, in addition to harmonization and transposition, which
100 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

also involve interlingual translation to some degree. Finally, we discuss intersemiotic

translation in the context of legal design and sign interpreting. To the best of our
knowledge, this is the first study which explores and synthesizes these three kinds of
translation from the perspective of legal studies.

INTERLINGUAL TRANSLATION IN LAW

AND LEGAL STUDIES
As observed by de Groot, ‘[t]he issue of the translation of legal information is one of the
core questions of comparative law’, since it is often confronted with a language barrier
when legal systems are compared (2006: 423). Comparative law, a branch of legal studies
that focuses on differences and similarities between legal systems, is a rare exception in
legal scholarship/research, as it acknowledges translation – yet interlingual translation has
served law for drafting and other legal purposes for centuries. This section will analyse
its presence in law.

Translation as a language right

The most natural situation when interlingual translation – and, more frequently,
interpreting – is evoked in and regulated by law is when it is conceptualized explicitly
or implicitly in the context of language rights as one of fundamental human rights of
(1) ethno-cultural minorities, and (2) suspected/accused persons and victims in criminal
proceedings.
In addition to religion, language is one of the main distinctive features of ethno-cultural
minorities (Wheatley 2005). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted
by the United Nations in 1948, prohibits discrimination on the grounds of language
(Article 2). This declaration had been preceded by a range of initiatives after the First
World War, when newly established central and eastern European countries signed
minority treaties under the League of Nations’ scheme (Wheatley 2005: 8–9). One of
the first treaties was the Polish Minorities Treaty, which later served as a model for
other countries (Wheatley 2005: 9). It recognized the right of minorities to use their
language in the private sphere, commerce, religion, publications as well as in writing and
speech before courts;1 the latter implies the use of translation. Some countries recognize
selected minority languages as their official languages, and draft legislation in two or
more languages. For example, Swedish has the status of official language in Finland,
where it is used by c. 5 per cent of the population.
The other conceptualization of translation sees it as a fundamental procedural right
of suspected and accused persons in criminal proceedings. The European Convention for
the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 1950 (Article 14) refers
to translation implicitly as part of the right to liberty and security, and right to fair trial
of arrested and charged persons in criminal proceedings, who are to be provided with
specific information (e.g. reasons for arrest and charges, nature of charges) and ensures
free interpreting at court (Articles 5(2) and 6(3)). Similar measures were adopted more
globally in 1966 by the United Nations as part of the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights. In the European Union (EU), these procedural rights are protected
further by Directive 2010/64/EU of the European Parliament and the Council of 20
October 2010, on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings,
which imposes an EU-common minimum standard in this respect. It explicitly mentions
TRANSLATION IN LAW 101

translation as a right of suspected or accused persons, to be ‘provided with a written

translation of all documents which are essential to ensure that they are able to exercise
their right of defence and to safeguard the fairness of the proceedings’ (Article 3). What is
essential is decided by competent authorities and includes any decision depriving a person
of liberty, a charge, indictment and judgement, the translation of which may be limited to
relevant passages and should be of sufficient quality (Article 3(2)–(4), 3(9)). Thus, in this
case, interlingual translation – even though limited to criminal proceedings and selected
jurisdictions – is regulated by law, as a measure protecting procedural rights of suspected
and accused persons.

Transnational circulation of legal ideas: Historical developments

and the concept of legal transplants
Even though not always referred to as ‘translation’ by legal scholars and practitioners,
translation has been used for ages as a tool to draft, adjudicate and administer law, and
for other legal purposes. The oldest known legal translation is the Egyptian-Hittite Peace
Treaty of 1271 B.C. (Šarčević 1997: 23). Translation has also been used to spread – or
impose – legal ideas, rules and institutions (concepts) into other countries’ legal orders
and to develop legal systems. Main sources of transfer include Roman law in the Middle
Ages; French, English and German law during the colonial era; and US law after the
Second World War.
In the Middle Ages, Latin functioned as a de facto official language and a lingua franca
in many countries across Europe. The popularity of legal Latin results from the heritage
of Roman law, in particular Justinian’s Corpus juris civilis, which spread in the civil-
law jurisdictions of continental Europe and provided them with a common conceptual
framework, considerably influencing the formation of early legal terminology in national
languages (Mattila 2006: 125–30). Latin was used to draft laws and write judgements
and other administrative documents. Since Latin was, at that time, mainly the language
of the clergy and intellectual elites, this must have necessitated translation. For example,
due to Polish nobles possessing little knowledge of Latin (they had generally low reading
and writing skills), oral administrative proceedings at the royal court, assemblies or courts
were conducted in Polish up to the sixteenth century; however, these proceedings were
written down in Latin (Szczepankowska 2004: 18). This practice concerned, for example,
law reports, judgements, all types of public and private documents, as well as statutes,
the collections of which were unofficially translated back into Polish in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries and were commonly used in court practice (Szczepankowska 2004:
18–22). Similar developments could be observed in other European countries in the
Middle Ages and the Renaissance; for instance, English courts heard cases first in Latin,
next in French and later in English, but prepared written documents in Latin (cf. Mattila
2006: 129 for a detailed discussion). The replacement of Latin by vernacular languages
resulted from the growing opacity and complexity of Latin and the rise of nation states,
although legislation continued to be drafted in Latin in some jurisdictions until modern
times (Mattila 2006: 127–30).
The next major waves representing legal ideas being diffused, in many cases, via
translation, were connected with power, prestige and progress: codifications and
colonialism, especially in the nineteenth century, and legal reforms and internationalization
in the twentieth century. Code Napoléon, the French Civil Code of 1804, was the first
modern and innovative code, and it had enormous impact across the world. It was
102 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

written in a succinct and accessible way (Tiersma 2012: 7). It was introduced in countries
conquered by Napoleon – Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, some
areas of Italy and Germany – and later into the colonies of these countries in Africa and
Latin America (legal colonization), as well as in other countries on a voluntary basis
(Tiersma 2012: 7). These national codes were largely translations of the French code:
for example, in the Netherlands, Italy, Haiti and Bolivia with lesser or greater degrees of
localization (cf. Graziadei 2006: 448–9). Other civil codes, most notably those of German
and Swiss origins, were also influential in Japan and the Republic of Turkey, respectively
(Graziadei 2006: 450–1). Similarly, the spread of common law was effected through
colonialism in the British Empire, for example, in the United States, Australia and India
(Graziadei 2006: 451–2). More recently, after the Second World War, the legal system
in the United States has exerted the greatest influence and has been a frequent source of
borrowings across the world, ranging from institutions (concepts) and legal rules (e.g. class
action, plea bargaining, derivative action), to institutional arrangements (judicial review),
whole branches of law (corporate law, constitutional law, securities law, competition
law), to approaches to law and legal education (Langer 2004: 1–2). As observed by Husa,
borrowings from other legal systems ‘increase with internationalization, globalization,
and European integration’ (2018: 137). The European integration behind the EU was
achieved thanks to translation. The EU has developed its own autonomous legal system,
which is independent of the member states’ national legal systems, but strongly embedded
in them at conceptual level (Doczekalska 2018: 174–5). This process – where national law
influences international or supranational law and vice versa – is referred to as vertical legal
transplants, as opposed to horizontal transplants across countries (Perju 2012: 1319–20;
Siems 2014: 232). At the end of the twentieth century, postcommunist Eastern European
countries launched huge reforms to transform into market economies by ‘transplanting’
numerous legal institutions from the United States and other developed countries into
their legal systems, and harmonizing their laws with EU law before these countries were
allowed to accede to the organization. What is visible over time is a shift (1) from legal
imposition (imperialism) to softer forms of influence, such as providing access to the
domestic law and its translations; (2) from transplanting entire codes to ‘piecemeal legal
transplants’ of selected institutions, mainly as tested, cost-saving solutions; and (3) from
adopting a translation of a foreign legal text to a transfer of a policy (Siems 2014: 236,
252–3, 260).
This mobility of law and its ‘diffusion’ are most commonly framed by legal scholars
under the label of legal transplants, that is, a transfer of legal concepts, legal rules or legal
institutions from the source legal system into the target legal system. Legal transplants are
one of the popular and hotly debated topics in comparative law (Siems 2014: 231–61).
The concept of legal transplants was promoted by Alan Watson (1974), who argues that
borrowings are omnipresent in legal history and are the main mechanism of legal change.
At the other extreme, Legrand (1997) argues that transplants are ‘impossible’ due to the
embedding of law in culture.
The term ‘legal transplant’ relies on the medical metaphor of transferring an organ
from one body to another, and on the botanical metaphor of removing a plant from one
place and planting it in another.2 Some legal scholars find these metaphors misleading.
For example, Langer argues that the transplant metaphor suggests that legal institutions
can be ‘cut and paste’ and fails to sufficiently account for transformations and adjustments
of transplants in the target legal system (2004: 5), because transplants do not occur ‘in
a legal cultural vacuum’ and are limited by ‘path dependence’ (Husa 2018: 130). In
TRANSLATION IN LAW 103

discussing the transplantation of American plea bargaining,3 Langer (2004: 5) proposes

the metaphor of ‘legal translation’, as a more ‘nuanced and productive heuristic device’,
since ‘The transferred legal practice – plea bargaining in this instance – can be thought
of as the “text” that has been translated from one “language” – the adversarial system of
the United States – to another “language” – the inquisitorial systems of Germany, Italy,
Argentina, and France’ (Langer 2004: 6).
Both systems are embedded in ‘different structures of interpretation and meaning’
related to criminal procedure in common law and civil law countries (Langer 2004:
10). A transplanted idea may be transformed by the target locale, but may also trigger
substantial changes and fragmentation in the target system (Langer 2004: 31–2), and may
even be ‘malicious’ (Siems 2018). What Langer likes about the legal translation metaphor
is that it ‘retains the comparative dimension’ and highlights a distinction between the
source and target systems and between the original and transplanted meaning, and
depends on a degree of literalness or adaptation applied by the drafters (Langer 2004:
32). Similarly, Foljanty, who uses the term ‘legal transfer’, explains it as a process of
‘cultural translation’, and drawing on translation studies and cultural studies, she argues
that the translation metaphor highlights the complexity and transformations at a ‘deeper
structure of law’ (2015: 6–7). Örücü (2002) argues for the term ‘legal transposition’,
as used in music to mean the alternation of key, to better account for the ‘tuning’ and
‘fitting’ of transplants in the receiving legal cultures. Constitutional comparative law
prefers the term ‘borrowing’ over ‘transplant’, and ‘migration’ over ‘circulation’ (Perju
2012: 1306). Alternative names that foreground various aspects of the phenomenon
include legal irritant, legal transfer, migration, borrowing, standardization, legal
transformation, diffusion, circulation, cross-fertilization, cross-pollination, transmission,
reception, inoculation and infiltration (cf. Örücü 2002: 207; Perju 2012: 1306; Husa
2018: 132). This productive area of terminologization is sometimes referred to as ‘the
battle of metaphors’ (Perju 2012: 1306–7).
The transnational mobility of law involves translation, and also bears resemblance
to it at the term level. When discussing this mobility of law, legal scholars use similar
terminology as translation scholars and/or contact linguists do: source, target, transfer,
borrowing, hybridization and so on, and the prefix ‘trans-’ shared by competing metaphors,
including ‘translation’. It seems, however, that the focus is on the ‘tuning’ – reception
and adjustment of transplanted institutions in the target system – rather than on the
transfer itself. The foregoing discussion shows that the movement takes place between
legal systems and is not always interlingual.

Multilingual drafting
Multilingual drafting has been extensively studied in translation studies literature that
deals with legal translation (cf. Šarčević 1997; Kjær 2007) and is, hence, dealt with
briefly. Multilingual drafting is a promulgation of law in more than one language, where
all language versions are regarded as ‘authentic’, that is, equally valid from a legal point of
view. It can be found in bilingual countries and/or regions, such as Canada and Belgium,
and supra-/international institutions, such as the EU.
The EU’s drafting of supranational law in twenty-four languages for application in
twenty-seven domestic legal systems is an extreme case of multilingualism. As often
remarked in the literature, EU legal translation challenges key translation studies concepts,
such as the source text/language, target text/language, equivalence, translation process,
104 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

quality (cf. Biel 2019 for an overview; Šarčević 1997; Koskinen 2001; Felici 2010).
Additionally, even though translation is used, legal practitioners (drafters) as well as
legal scholars and practitioners (cf. e.g. Derlén 2015) intentionally avoid referring to the
term ‘translation’ and have developed an alternative terminology, for example, authentic
version (instead of source/target text), de jure/de facto original and base text (source
text), multilingual drafting (translation), interlingual text reproduction (translation),
multilingual concordance (equivalence) and so on, since the term ‘translation’ may imply
a text of secondary importance. The alternative terminology emphasizes that a legal act
exists in twenty-four equally valid language versions and raises the status of a translated
text to an ‘authentic version’, on an equal footing with the original (see also section
below, on transposition of EU directives into national law). Yet it is acknowledged in the
literature on EU law and translation and confirmed by EU case law that the presumption
of the same meaning in all language versions is unrealistic since divergences between
language versions are unavoidable; hence, it is secondary – as observed by Šarčević (1997:
73) – to ‘the presumption of equal intent’ and supported by a more flexible approach to
interpretation (see Biel 2014: 62–72 for further discussion).

INTRALINGUAL TRANSLATION AND LAW

Although practically excluded from the scope of translation studies, intralingual
translation is similar to interlingual translation, with – as argued by Zethsen – differences
being quantitative rather than qualitative (2009: 795). In Zethsen’s opinion, the main
differences include a larger degree of freedom and increased simplification in intralingual
translation, in particular in the case of ‘explanatory translation’, which exists in
adaptations to the target group’s knowledge (2009: 806–9). This explanatory translation
can be found in law, most notably in plain language documents, or in other legal materials
addressed to the general public. In addition to knowledge, other parameters along which
texts are intralingually translated include time, culture and space (Zethsen 2009: 806–
9). The space parameter reduces and condenses text due to space constraints (Zethsen
2009: 807), which can be exemplified by legislative summaries. The culture parameter
(‘intercultural translation’), which clarifies cultural references (Zethsen 2009: 807), can
be illustrated with common law to civil law translations, for example, in Louisiana or
Canada, the latter of which will be exemplified below.
Yet, intralingual legal translation does not seem to be fully covered by these parameters
and it does not, in principle, involve simplification or a larger degree of freedom. One
of the fundamental distinctions made in jurisprudence is the distinction between the
language of the law, that is, statutes, regulations, ordinances, and its metalanguage, also
known in the literature as legal language4 (i.e. language that is used by lawyers when they
analyse, describe and apply the law) (Wróblewski 1948: 54). Thus, intralingual translation
translates mainly from and into the language of the law, for example, when policies are
translated into the language of the law and when legal norms are interpreted from law.

Legislative drafting
A legal act, or rather its draft (‘a bill’ in common law countries), is drawn up in the
language of the law. Its form and structure are required by law or developed through
practice.5 The rigidness of form and language makes it difficult to draft it from
scratch. Some jurisdictions require or recommend deriving a draft from a preparatory
TRANSLATION IN LAW 105

TABLE 6.1 An example illustrating the translation of drafting instructions into a

legal provision
Genre Polish texts English back translations
DRAFTING 5.5. Ustawa przewidywać 5.5. The act will provide for
INSTRUCTIONS będzie prawo przeprowadzenia the right to conduct control
kontroli poza planem beyond the control plan. The
The assumptions
kontroli. Decyzję w tej kwestii decision in this matter will
to the draft of an
podejmował będzie kierownik be taken by the head of the
act on government
jednostki kontrolującej. controlling unit.
administration control7
LEGAL ACT Art. 12.2. Kierownik jednostki Art. 12.2. The head of the
kontrolującej może zarządzić controlling unit may order
Act of 15 July 2011
przeprowadzenie kontroli to conduct a control not
on government
nieprzewidzianej okresowym provided for in the periodic
administration control
planem kontroli. control plan.

document, such as drafting instructions for the Office of the Parliamentary Council in
the UK.6 These documents are usually prepared by the government and submitted to the
legislative department, which writes the draft to be enacted by the parliament. Drafting
instructions not only propose the content but also contain the policy summary and
objectives, the analysis of the existing law and alternatives to the proposed solutions.
They form a genre chain with legal acts. Since these instructions are written in the legal
language, they must be intralingually translated into the language of the law, as shown
in Table 6.1.
The wording of these two texts is different, although the legal act provides the meaning
required in the drafting instructions, which explain what right should be provided in a
legal act and who should be vested with this right. The legal act addresses the right
directly to the person who is granted it.
The process of legislative drafting is influenced by theoretical assumptions about the
drafters’ role, as well as by practical considerations, such as the existence of drafting
instructions, their degree of detail and form, drafters’ agency and so on. This section
will analyse the process of legislative drafting to determine when it involves intralingual
translation. For this purpose, it is necessary to consider (1) whether policymaking is
distinguished from bill drafting; (2) the nature of drafting instructions and the extent to
which the wording of drafting instructions differs from that of the final legal act; and (3)
drafters’ role and agency.
First of all, the distinction between policymaking and the drafting of a legal act is
not always maintained. Some national legal systems require drafters to start work after
the policy is decided (e.g. the UK, Australia). The policy is usually reflected in drafting
instructions. However, even if the policymaking responsibility is distinguished from the
drafting responsibility, drafting instructions are, in practice, not always prepared (e.g.
Poland, cf. Borski 2018), or they are given only verbally (e.g. Malta, cf. Aquilina 2017).
For instance, drafting instructions are required in Poland only if the legislative proposal
comes from the government.8 If there are no drafting instructions, there is no source text
from which an intralingual translation could be made.
Second, drafting instructions can serve as a source of intralingual translation if they
contain an adequate amount of information, namely (1) they are not too general, and (2)
106 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

they do not have the form of a legal act. Drafting manuals contain some recommendations
on the degree of detail and content of drafting instructions. For example, the British
Columbia legislative guide recommends finding ‘a middle ground between too much and
too little detail’ (OLC 2013: 3). If the policy is not clearly explained, drafters become
policymakers. Drafters are not expected to make policy but to translate it into a legal act.9
On the other hand, if the instructions are too detailed, especially if they are formulated as
a legal act, drafters’ role is reduced to that of proofreaders or editors. Legislative drafting
manuals do not recommend writing instructions in the form of a legal act. For instance,
the Bermudian drafting guidelines suggest: ‘Please use plain language when preparing
drafting instructions (do not attempt to draft).’10 In British Columbia, ‘[i]nstructions
in the form of draft legislation are not encouraged, but they are also not prohibited’
(Office of the Legal Counsel 2013: 2). If drafting instructions are prepared as a draft
legislation, the British Columbia drafting guide requires each provision to be annotated
with explanations of the background, objective and rationale. Moreover, the drafters are
obliged to follow the policy, but not the draft (Office of the Legal Counsel 2013). Hence,
in this case, some elements of intralingual translation can also be present.
Drafters’ role is influenced by the form and degree of detail of drafting instructions,
and can differ across jurisdictions. It is shaped by assumptions about extent of divisions
between the substance (content) and the form of the legal act that is accepted, and
whether effective legislation requires the substance and the form to be separated or
linked. The traditional approach – reflected, for instance, in Henry Thring’s work of
1878, on drafting British Acts of Parliament – recommends a strict division between
the content and the form and reduces the drafter’s task to the formulation of a legal act
(Stefanou 2016: 364). The separation of two processes – that is, policy formulation and
legal act production – should ensure effective law that fulfils policy aims (Caldwell 1998:
82). Drafters’ work is, hence, referred to as the translation of policy into a legal act.
Kennedy explains that, after a policy has been agreed upon, ‘[i]t then becomes a distinct
function to translate the legislative policy into the terms of a statute’ (1946: 103). There
are numerous examples of legal scholars using the word ‘translate’ to refer to this aspect
of legislative drafting in the meaning of ‘rewording’: ‘the draft bill translates the policy
into law’ (Ntaba 2016: 149); ‘the translation of policy into precise norms may introduce
new features into the text’ (Ntaba 2016: 147–8); ‘This chapter centres attention on the
design and drafting of detailed rules to translate policymakers’ large ideas into effective
legislation that works’ (Seidman and Seidman 2016: 330).
In turn, scholars who claim that ‘the form and content of legislation must be linked’
to achieve effective legislation, or if it is actually connected, or at least the separation
between substance and form is blurred (Nzerem 2016: 159), do not consider drafters as
‘a mere policy translator’ (Ntaba 2016: 145). For them, drafters’ role goes beyond the
translation of policy into a legal act. According to Nzerem, ‘the drafter plays an important
role with respect to both the form and content of a law’, and, therefore, ‘to translate
government policies into effective law’ is the first duty of a legislative drafter, though not
the only one (Nzerem 2016: 157–8). Drafters are certainly not empowered to design the
policy or to enact legislation; however, the substance does influence the form, and vice
versa. According to contextual and systemic methods of interpretation, an interpreter
should, for instance, take into consideration where a provision is placed in the legal act.
The order of provisions and the structure of a legal act are decided by drafters. In doing
so, they follow legislative drafting rules; however, they still have some discretion in this
respect. Drafters are also often responsible for assuring that a legal act is consistent with
TRANSLATION IN LAW 107

the binding legislation. Therefore, they can refuse to introduce certain content, or may
propose amendments to the existing legislation. Even if drafting instructions are precise,
drafters sometimes need to make decisions related to the content, by filling in details,
solving problems or reducing complexity, even at the stage of policy preparation when
they are asked for advice by policymakers. Hence, their discretion seems to be broader
than the one traditionally vested in translators.

Harmonization of law: The case of Canada

Legal harmonization is usually undertaken to converge and approximate legal rules in
various legal systems. For instance, the harmonization of EU member states’ laws aims
at creating common standards and removing barriers in the EU internal market (Woods
et al. 2017: 335). The legislative process aimed at harmonization involves intralingual
translation, and is similar to the processes explained above. Therefore, this section focuses
on a special case of harmonization in the Canadian federal legislation.
Harmonization was introduced in Canada to facilitate the interpretation and application
of Canadian federal law in two legal traditions: civil law in Quebec and common law
in other parts of Canada. The coexistence of two legal traditions (bijuralism) and the
requirement to draft and enact federal legal acts in English and French (legal bilingualism)
create four legal audiences of Canadian legislation: Anglophone and Francophone
common law lawyers, and Anglophone and Francophone civilian jurists (Bastarache
2000: 21). Consequently, federal law – when referring to the concepts of provincial
law, especially in the area of property and civil rights – should render them in both the
common law and civil law terminology.
Bijuralism and the four audiences of Canadian federal law were not formally
recognized until the 1990s. Earlier, the English versions of federal laws used the common
law terminology, while the French versions reflected the civil law terminology. This
practice was strengthened by the requirement to draft legal acts in the spirit of each
official language (Covacs 1983), which was introduced in the 1970s to improve the
quality of French versions of legal acts (COL 1976). The co-drafting technique designed
for this purpose11 succeeded in balancing the quality of both language versions, but failed
to guarantee the equality of four legal audiences. Therefore, the federal programme
of harmonizing federal law with terms and concepts of the Civil Code of Quebec was
introduced in 1993. Three Harmonization Acts12 were enacted to adjust the wording
of binding federal legal acts. An extensive body of literature exists on techniques for
harmonizing civil and common law terminologies in English and French (cf. Wellington
2001; Sullivan 2004). Two drafting techniques – simple double and paragraphed double
(doublet) ones – are illustrated, after Wellington (2001: 10–1), in Tables 6.2 and 6.3.
The simple double technique (Table 6.2) places ‘the terms or concepts specific to each
legal system one after the other’, while the paraphrased double technique (Table 6.3)
places them in separate paragraphs (Wellington 2001: 10–1). Both techniques replace the
concept from one legal system with English and French expressions applicable in both
common law and civil law. It can be a neutral term that does not have any meaning in
either of the legal systems, or two expressions denoting a concept belonging to different
legal systems. This replacement can be regarded as an intralingual translation between
legal systems. Its categorization as intralingual translation depends on the nature of
harmonization, in particular whether the bijural harmonization has changed the meaning
of these acts. The Supreme Court of Canada answered this question in Schreiber v. Canada,
108 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

TABLE 6.2 An example of simple double technique

Federal Law-Civil Law Harmonization Act, No. 1, S.C. 2001, c. 4, s. 13
Federal Real Property Act, S.C. 1991, c. 50 Loi sur les immeubles fédéraux, L.C. 1991, ch. 50
BEFORE HARMONIZATION
4. Subject to any other Act, no sale, 4. Sous réserve de toute autre loi, la vente,
lease or other disposition of federal la location ou autre acte d’aliénation d’un
real property shall be made and no immeuble fédéral ou la délivrance d’un permis
license shall be given in respect of federal à son égard sont subordonnés aux prescriptions
real property except in accordance with de la présente loi.
this Act.
AFTER HARMONIZATION
4. Subject to any other Act, no disposition 4. Sous réserve de toute autre loi, la disposition
or lease of federal real property or ou la location d’un immeuble fédéral ou
federal immovables shall be made and d’un bien réel fédéral ou la délivrance d’un
no license shall be given in respect of any permis à son égard sont assujetties à la
such property except in accordance with présente loi.
this Act.

TABLE 6.3 An example of paragraphed double technique

Federal Law-Civil Law Harmonization Act, No. 1, S.C. 2001, c. 4, s. 13
Crown Liability and Proceedings Act, Loi sur la responsabilité civile de l’État et le
R.S.C. (1985), c. C-50 contentieux administratif, L.R.C. (1985), ch. C-50
BEFORE HARMONIZATION
2. In this Act, 2. Les définitions qui suivent s’appliquent à la
présente loi.
… […]
‘tort’ includes delict and quasi-delict; « délit civil » Délit ou quasi-délit
AFTER HARMONIZATION
2. In this Act, 2. Les définitions qui suivent s’appliquent à la
présente loi.
… […]
‘liability’, for the purposes of Part 1, « responsabilité » Pour l’application de la partie 1:
means
(a) in the Province of Quebec, a) dans la province de Québec, la responsabilité
extracontractual civil liability, and civile extracontractuelle;
(b) in any other province, liability b) dans les autres provinces, la responsabilité
in tort; délictuelle.

stating that ‘amendments made with a view to harmonizing legislation are intended only
to change the form and not the substance of the legislation’.13 Thus, from their very
enactment, both the English and French language versions have the meaning applicable
in the common law and civil law systems. This rewording (replacement of the expression
TRANSLATION IN LAW 109

or adding another expression) under the Harmonization Acts is deemed not to change the
meaning of the language versions. Hence, from the legal standpoint, the same meaning in
the same language is rendered by different verbal signs.

Transposition of EU directives into national law

Another alternative version of intralingual translation is ‘transposition’. This term is
derived from the verb ‘to transpose’, borrowed from French transposer <trans- + poser to
place>, meaning, among others, various types of change, including a translation: ‘(1) to
change (one thing) to or into another; to transform, transmute, convert; (2) to change
(a writing or book) into another language, style of composition, or mode of expression;
to translate; to transfer; to adapt’.14 Although these senses of ‘to transpose’ are now
obsolete, there is a clear etymological overlap between transposition and translation.
In the legal context, the term ‘transposition’ denotes a complex legal process of
incorporating EU legal acts by the member states’ drafters into their national legal orders
by amending existing national laws or enacting new laws. It is a ‘gentler’ and more flexible
harmonization method, meant to ensure the uniform application and interpretation of
EU law throughout the EU. Transposition applies specifically to directives – one of two
key types of EU normative acts that are used by the EU to harmonize the member states’
national laws. While the other type of legal acts – regulations – are self-executing, as
they are directly applicable and binding in their entirety, directives specify an objective
to be achieved by the member states within a specific deadline and give them leeway
to choose the form and method.15 Therefore, in contrast to regulations that impose a
union-wide set of common standards, directives are addressed to the member states as
a more general ‘framework law’ (Bradley 2017: 100). Setting more general common
norms and directives, on the one hand, ensures some convergence and, on the other
hand, allows some variation between the member states through ‘adaptations to national
circumstances’, especially in politically sensitive areas (Lelieveldt and Princen 2015: 80).
These adaptations reduce interference in the national legal system (Šarčević 2012: 90)
and reduce the distance between the EU and national addressees of EU law: ‘Union
policy is … applied through national legal forms, which are more familiar to both
the citizen and the administrative authorities responsible for its concrete application’
(Bradley 2017: 100). In other words, directives harmonize the member states’ laws
through localization.
While transposition per se is a classic example of intralingual translation within the
same language, and is categorized as such in legal translation studies (cf. Kjær 2007:
77; Biel 2014: 59), in practice, transposition involves both interlingual and intralingual
translation, and also determines, to some extent, how its preceding interlingual
translation is rendered. In most cases, transposition is based on a translated version
of a directive. The life path of a directive can be staged into drafting, authentication,
entry into national legal systems, use and interpretation (Biel and Doczekalska 2020:
186). Directives are, first, drafted by the European Commission as a legislative proposal,
mainly in (EU) English and translated into other official languages. Legislative proposals
are drafted in the culturally neutralized EU variant of English with autonomous legal
concepts (cf. Bajčić 2018). They are translated into similar neutralized variants of
national legal languages, known as Eurolects, by avoiding terms of national law. In the
translation of directives, it is particularly recommended to avoid localizations, to avoid
‘trespass’ on areas reserved for national governments (Wagner et al. 2002: 64). After
translated directives leave the Commission, they are consulted and negotiated at other EU
110 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

institutions, in various languages and with the involvement of translators and interpreters.
They are then authenticated, that is, adopted in twenty-four authentic language versions
by the European Parliament and the Council and published in the Official Journal of
the European Union. The next stage is the entry of directives into national legal systems
through a transposition effected by national governments. Transposition is based on a
relevant language version of the directive, which is ‘translated’ from a supranational legal
language of EU law into a national legal language – for example, EU German is translated
into Austria’s or Germany’s legal German. This process is referred to by Kjær as a ‘national
translation of EU law’, in contrast to the supranational interlingual translation of EU law,
which takes place in the EU institutions (2007: 77). After the enactment of transposing
measures, member states notify the Commission, which, next, verifies whether they meet
the objectives.
The degree of localization to the national legal language during transposition
depends on the type of harmonization method laid down in a directive and the preferred
transposition method in a given country. Although, as previously noted, directives, in
principle, give member states leeway, they are becoming increasingly more detailed
and, hence, less flexible (cf. Lelieveldt and Princen 2015: 80; Bradley 2017: 100) and
may be subject to various degrees of harmonization. If a directive is subject to minimum
harmonization, member states must ensure that a minimum standard envisaged by a
directive is met, and may exceed it if they wish (Woods et al. 2017: 340). If a directive
is subject to total harmonization, member states must ensure full compliance, but may
not introduce stricter national provisions than those required by a directive (Woods
et al. 2017: 338). Second, and perhaps more importantly from a linguistic point of
view, the degree of localization depends on the transposition technique adopted
by national drafts. The two extremes, which, in a way, mirror the foreignizing and
domesticating strategies, are copy-out and elaboration, respectively. The copy-out
technique copies and pastes the provisions of the directive with as minimum editing
and adaptation as possible, usually to avoid under- or over-implementation (Robinson
2017: 234). This technique is generally preferred by member states (Voermans 2008:
8), and may be favoured in the case of maximum harmonization, even though, as
a result, national provisions copying the generic language of directives may lack
sufficient precision or clarity (Robinson 2017: 235). The intralingual translation
proper takes place when the other technique – elaboration, also known as rewrite
(cf. Greenberg 2012: 245) – is applied. On the one hand, elaboration has pejorative
overtones and ‘carries connotations of going further than is legally required’, that is,
gold plating (Greenberg 2012: 245). On the other hand, it consists in rewriting the
provisions of directives in the spirit of the national drafting style and in line with
the national concept system, to make such provisions more familiar to the national
audience and align it better with the domestic legal order. As shown by our study into
the ‘travelling’ of supranational consumer protection terms into national UK Maltese
and Irish contexts (Biel and Doczekalska 2020): (1) A great number of EU concepts
were imported verbatim into transposing acts; (2) some were modified slightly (e.g.
contractual term – contract term), by addition (health professional – health-care
professional), reduction – (standard of special skill and care – standard of skill and
care); or (3) were partially or fully localized by substitution with terms of national
law (e.g. immovable property – real property; a natural person – an individual;
withdrawal – cancellation); or (4) were not transferred at all at term level. A different
type of transfer happens at concept level, where a linguistic label for a concept – a
TRANSLATION IN LAW 111

term – can be either transferred verbatim from the translated directive, together
with its definition, or its definition may be modified or localized to the national
understanding of a concept (Biel and Doczekalska 2020). However, both foreignizing
and domesticating methods have their advantages and disadvantages. Foreignization
is safer, as it reduces risks of inappropriate implementation, but it can impede the
comprehensibility and correct application of transposing measures (Šarčević 2012:
91). Domestication maintains the integrity of the national legal system but can cause
‘incoherence’ between the supranational and national conceptual systems (Šarčević
2012: 91) and introduce terminological variation.

Application of law: Decoding legal norms as an intralingual translation

Another legal process that involves intralingual translation concerns decoding legal
norms from legal provisions during the interpretation and application of law. John
Dickinson defines the term ‘application of law’ as an ‘employment of a legal rule to aid
in the decision of a specific case’ (1931: 1052). This decision-making process comprises
several phases, including an interpretation of legal provisions, decoding a legal rule
(norm) and deciding whether this norm is applicable to the proved facts of the case
(Korybski 2015).
Law is often described as a system of legal norms. A legal norm is an utterance
encompassing a rule of conduct interpreted from binding legal acts. A legal norm indicates
not only the conduct (a duty, prohibition or permission to behave in a certain way)
but also to whom (the addressee) and in what circumstances the rule is applied. Norms
usually also specify the consequences of violating the rule. These components of a legal
norm may be expressed verbatim in a single legal provision, but may also be scattered
across several provisions in various legal acts.
The most important phase of norm decoding is to identify the normative element
(duty, right). Take for example Article 144 of the Polish Civil Code:16 ‘In exercising
his right, a real estate owner should refrain from actions which could disrupt the use
of neighboring real estate beyond a normal scope, arising from the social and economic
purpose of the real estate and local relations’, where the normative element is expressed
verbatim (duty: ‘should refrain’). However, in the next example, from Article 148(1)
of the Polish Criminal Code, the normative element must be decoded from legal
provisions: ‘Whoever kills a human is subject to the penalty of deprivation of liberty for
no less than 8 years, the penalty of deprivation of liberty for 25 years or the penalty of
deprivation of liberty for life’.17 Its content entails the prohibition of an act of murder
(killing a person), although there is no explicit wording which states this prohibition. The
norm decoded from Article 148 includes the following elements: addressee – anyone;
scope of conduct– prohibition of the killing a person; consequences of violating the
norm – imprisonment for a minimum term of eight years, imprisonment for twenty-five
years or imprisonment for life.
The decoding of a legal norm from legal provisions involves the intralingual translation
of the language of the law into the language of legal practice. Because a legal norm
is not always explicitly expressed in legal provisions and has to be reconstructed from
legal act(s), such a norm is regarded as an extra-textual element of law. However, in
statutory law traditions, where judges are not allowed to create new general legal norms,
an interpreter of law (a judge or another body applying law), while decoding a legal
norm, cannot add to or omit anything included in legal acts enacted by a legislative
112 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

body (e.g. the parliament). Thus, the exact meaning of a legal provision is decoded
through a different wording of a legal norm. Although a comparison of a legal provision
with a legal norm based on that provision might leave an impression of extra-content
(meaning) in a legal norm, the legal norm is expected to transfer the same meaning as
legal provisions. In contrast to transposition, the degree of freedom is very limited in this
type of intralingual translation.

INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION AND LAW

Intersemiotic translation – transmutation – is the least explored type of translation in
the context of law. Its traces can be found, for example, in judges’ ceremonial clothing
(gowns, wigs) and the solemnity of court buildings, which communicate the power and
authority of court (cf. Mattila 2006: 50–1). This section briefly discusses two types of
translation of verbal signs into visual and spatial signs: legal design and sign language
interpreting.
Legal design is an emerging phenomenon that involves ‘the application of human-
centered design to the world of law, to make legal systems and services more human-
centered, usable, and satisfying’ (Hagan n.d.). There is a growing awareness of the need
to communicate legal information with more clarity, not only through accessible plain
language but also through the visual representation of legal content. It may involve a
meaningful use of visuals, layout, information flow, headings, font size, type and colour,
tables and other visual elements, to support the communication of complex legal
information with a view to engaging users and improving their experience (Hagan n.d.).18
Thus, this approach involves an intralingual translation of complex legal information into
plain language, and its intersemiotic translation into visual signs.
Another type of intersemiotic translation is found in sign language interpreting.19
Sign language interpreting takes place between spoken (auditory-verbal) and sign
(visual-spatial) language, or between two sign languages. Sign language interpreting
can occur in legal settings, such as courts or the police, and its provision is part of
Deaf people’s language rights. This raises an interesting question: How are complex
abstract legal concepts communicated in a visual-spatial way? For example, the sign
for LAW in American Sign Language (ASL), which is hypothesized to derive from
French LOI and to represent the referencing of a document (Shaffer 2018: 8), was
described in the 1918 Manual of Signs by J. Schuyler Long as follows: ‘Hold up open
left hand, fingers up, pointing the thumb toward you; lift up the forefinger of right
“G” hand and throw it against the palm of the left near the end of the fingers; strike
the palm this way several times but each time striking it lower down’ (Long 1918: 219,
in Shaffer 2018: 9).
In the case of spoken-language-competent Deaf persons, terms can be fingerspelled;
for Deaf persons fluent in sign language, who may also lack ‘a clear understanding of the
law’ and legal terminology, signs have to be developed (Foret and Petrowske 1976: vi,
1). In respect of ASL, a group of interpreting and legal experts met in 1974 to develop,
agree upon and standardize visual signs for about 1,000 common legal terms, as well as
to raise awareness of the judiciary of ‘the paraphrasing, defining, and explaining required
of an interpreter’ in this context (Foret and Petrowske 1976: v, 6). Legal signs were
developed on the basis of their definitions, and existing signs or combinations of signs are
illustrated20 in Table 6.4, after Foret and Petrowske (1976).
TRANSLATION IN LAW 113

TABLE 6.4 Examples of legal signs in ASL (adapted from Foret and Petrowske, 1976)
Legal concept Signing instructions
Ownership Yours
(directional)
Testimony ‘swear’ + story
(promise)
Divorce marriage + MIME
(L. and R. ‘A’ hands together, then pulled apart)
Seizure government/police + ‘grab, grab’
(with L. and R. hands alternating)
Accomplice ‘you two’       + agree (DM) + cooperate + law + break
(shaking, directionality)
Miranda warning court + required + warn + you + must + understand + before +
say + anything

Legend: (DM) – double movement; L – left; R – right; parenthesis below line – specific
signing instructions; inverted commas – sign word in ASL
Even though, as can be seen in Table 6.4, legal concepts are partially explicated through
gestures, there are still questions about the extent to which legal signs used by hearing
sign language interpreters have been internalized and are understood by Deaf persons (cf.
Foret and Petrowske 1976: 5). For native Deaf persons, a sign language is often a first
or preferred language, while English (or German, Spanish, Japanese, etc.) is their second
language (The Advocate’s Gateway 2018: 7, 19). Interpreting is required to involve
‘cultural mediation’ and clarifications, in order to ‘bridge the gap between the court and
the deaf person’ and to account for the visual nature of sign language (The Advocate’s
Gateway 2018: 26). In the case of Deaf persons with additional communication needs,
courts in the UK may use Deaf interpreters (also known as Deaf relays), who are deaf and
are usually registered intermediaries, mediating between the Deaf client and a hearing
sign language interpreter: it may involve intralingual translation within sign language,
such as ‘tactile signing, addition information or examples, using visual cues or role-play,
drawing pictures or using other visual props’ (The Advocate’s Gateway 2018: 10). Doing
so helps to monitor the level of understanding and make necessary adjustments, to ensure
effective legal communication.

CONCLUSION
This chapter surveyed how intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translation is used
alternatively in the domain of law and legal studies. When regulated by law, interlingual
translation is most often understood as a language right of minorities and a procedural
right of suspected and accused persons in criminal proceedings, to safeguard their
fairness. Historically, translation has, throughout the centuries, been closely linked to the
114 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

transnational circulation of legal ideas and has helped to control, but also to reform and
innovate. This transfer of legal ideas is known mainly under the name of legal transplants,
but is also discussed by some legal scholars as ‘legal translation’, with the focus on how
transplanted ideas are adapted in the target system. Other uses of interlingual translation
may be found in multilingual drafting when law is passed in more than one language, even
though the term ‘translation’ tends to be avoided in order to avoid undermining the status
of a translated legal act. In respect of intralingual translation, we discussed its prevalent use
in the drafting and application of law: the translation of policies into law, terminological
harmonization of Canadian law, transposition of EU directives into national law, and
interpretation of legal norms from legal provisions. As we demonstrated, intralingual legal
translation does not in principle consist in simplification and tends to limit the degree of
freedom. It revolves around the language of the law and its transformations into another
language of the law (e.g. transposition), or into other types of legal language when it takes
place within a legal system. With intersemiotic translation, complex legal information
is designed partly or signed fully with visual signs. To sum up, as demonstrated in this
chapter, law can foreground hitherto hidden aspects of translation that go beyond the
traditional understanding of translation as interlingual transfer.

NOTES
1 Article 7, Treaty between the Principal Allied and Associated Powers and Poland, signed at
Versailles, 28 June 1919.
2 ‘transplant, v.’ OED Online. Oxford University Press, December 2020, Available online:
www.oed.com/view/Entry/204998 (accessed 16 January 2021).
3 Plea bargaining is an agreement between a prosecutor and a defendant in which the
defendant pleads guilty in exchange for some concessions on the part of the prosecutor
(Garner 2009: 1270).
4 There is some terminological confusion concerning these terms: both legal language and
the language of the law are used in a generic and specific sense (cf. Biel 2014: 19–20 for
discussion).
5 For instance, Polish legislative rules have a binding force as ordinances, while the UK and
Canadian drafting manuals are not binding; there are no written drafting rules in some
countries (e.g. Malta).
6 Cabinet Office, Guide to Making Legislation, July 2017, Available online: https://assets.
publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/645652/
Guide_to_Making_Legislation_Jul_2017.pdf (accessed 10 March 2021).
7 Available at https://bip.rcl.gov.pl/rcl/legislacja/inne-projekty-archiwum/1438,Projekt-
zalozen-do-projektu-ustawy-o-kontroli-w-administracji-rzadowej.html
8 Ustawa z dnia 8 sierpnia 1996 r. o Radzie Ministrów (Dz. U. z 2021 r. poz. 178), Article 7.2.
9 See the Australian drafting guidelines: ‘[d]rafters do not make policy’, OPC’s Drafting
Services: A Guide for Clients, Canberra 2016, p. 10, Available online: https://www.opc.gov.
au/sites/default/files/s13ag320.v49.pdf (accessed 10 March 2021).
10 Drafting Instructions – Template and Guidelines, p. 1. Available online: https://www.gov.
bm/sites/default/files/Legislation-Drafting-Instructions-Template.pdf
11 For more information, see Wood (1996), Šarčević (2005), Gémar (2013).
TRANSLATION IN LAW 115

12 Federal Law–Civil Law Harmonization Act, No. 1, S.C. 2001, c. 4, Federal Law-Civil Law
Harmonization Act, No. 2, S.C. 2004, c. 25; Federal Law-Civil Law Harmonization Act,
No. 3, S.C. 2011, c. 2.
13 Schreiber v. Canada (A.G.), [2002] 3 S.C.R. 269.
14 ‘transpose, v.’ OED Online, Oxford University Press, December 2020, Available online:
www.oed.com/view/Entry/205034 (accessed 16 January 2021).
15 Article 288, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, TFEU.
16 The Civil Code (2011), tr. Ewa Kucharska, Warszawa: Beck.
17 The Criminal Code (2014), trans. Włodzimierz Wróbel, Adam Wojtaszczyk, Witold Zontek,
Warszawa: Wolters Kluwer.
18 Examples of legal design thinking may be found on the website of the Stanford Legal
Design Lab at the Stanford Law School and the Stanford University’s Institute of Design:
https://www.legaltechdesign.com/
19 We wish to thank Dr Aleksandra Kalata-Zawłocka of the Institute of Applied Linguistics,
University of Warsaw, for consultations concerning sign language interpreting.
20 For video illustrations of how selected legal concepts are signed in ASL, see the
website of the National Consortium of Interpreter Education Centers: http://www.
interpretereducation.org/specialization/legal/terminology/

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 CHAPTER SEVEN

Translation Approaches
within Organization Studies
SUSANNE TIETZE, KAISA KOSKINEN AND REBECCA PIEKKARI

In this chapter, we introduce translation approaches used in organization studies, which is

a field of enquiry concerned with understanding the construction, constitution and change
of organizations, organizing and management through individual, collectives and agents
(Clegg et al. 2006). In our earlier work, we argued for the added value of interlingual
translation in understanding translation work in multilingual organizations (Piekkari et al.
2020). In this chapter, we introduce translation approaches used in organization studies.
Organization studies is part of the broad and varied field of business and management
studies, and much of its research is empirical, and uses social science methods for
systematic enquiry and analysis. This field draws on a variety of academic disciplines, such
as sociology, psychology and anthropology, and also the arts and humanities, philosophy
and linguistics. More recently, organization studies has started to borrow directly from
translation studies, to make sense of organizational phenomena by appropriating some
of its authors and concepts. This multidisciplinary character also means that, sometimes,
borrowing from other disciplines leads to metatheoretical challenges and unintended
consequences, such as confusing the appropriate level of analysis or compromising
definitional clarity (Whetten et al. 2009) – an example would be the easy appropriation
of some aspects of Venuti’s work (1995) in organization studies. Notwithstanding these
challenges, we see such appropriation as a sign of organization studies evolving as a
field of inquiry, thus, beginning to embrace phenomena of multilingualism, including
translation.
Organization studies has developed particular language-sensitive approaches
to guiding research enquiry, and it is these approaches we review in this chapter, to
establish how and why translation is (or is not) drawn upon by organizational research.
It is important to emphasize early on that, within organization studies, translation is not
typically understood to denote interlingual translation (i.e. translation between two or
more languages). We show that translation is used, instead, either in a fairly loose way to
describe organizational change processes or as a means to understand the movement of
ideas, practices, objects and resources across borders and how they therefore change when
being received in a specific locality. From the perspective of translation studies, this state
of affairs creates a challenge that is similar to that facing several other fields: Translation
as a concept is evoked to discuss movement, change, innovation and transformation, but
not necessarily the actual process of expressing talk and discourse in another language.
120 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

In other words, the kind of concrete interlingual translation we might call prototypical
(Halverson 2000), or translation proper (Jakobson 2000), is often overlooked, whereas
a broader, more metaphorical meaning of translation is theorized extensively and
studied empirically.
We start this chapter by providing a brief overview of organization studies, including
an explanation of its position vis-à-vis the English language. We want to demonstrate the
(interlingual) translation blindness of this field, which occurs even in research projects
located in multilingual environments. Our main aim in this section is to establish the key
characteristics of organization studies, as these are pertinent also to its current treatments
of translation and a possible future integration of interlingual translation. After providing
an overview of organization studies, we outline different approaches to translation, such as
translation as organizational change, and as a metaphor for movement across the globe, as
established by particular schools of thought within the broad field of organization studies.
We then proceed to introduce three contemporary empirical studies that started to focus
their enquiry on language plurality and the concomitant existence, use and function of
interlingual translation. While we acknowledge that these approaches could be linked to
existing research in translation studies and elsewhere – and this might be an interesting
intellectual exercise in its own right – our current aim is not to tease out connections to
translation theories where they have not been created by the original authors. Instead, we
want to illustrate what kinds of translation concepts have been evoked in organization
studies and to highlight when the authors have, indeed, turned to translation studies for
inspiration, and when not. Our own position, as expressed before (Piekkari et al. 2020),
is strongly in favour of continued dialogue with translation studies.
In what follows, we explore the benefits of including interlingual translation,
understood as a language practice in multilingual contexts, in the intellectual project of
organization studies. We argue that such an approach is aligned well with the purposes
and orientations of organization studies. As we show below, existing research draws
on many sources and conceptualizations of translation, though direct borrowing form
translation studies is still rare. We conclude with an optimistic look into the future of
translation as fully integrated into organization studies. This optimistic view is based on
the existence of some contemporary studies, both empirical and conceptual, in which
collaborations between organization studies and translation studies scholars enable
analysis of organizational processes from a translation perspective (Ciuk et al. 2019;
Piekkari et al. 2020).

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATION STUDIES

It is important to clarify from the beginning that, when most organization studies
scholars use the term ‘language’, they do not refer to language as a natural language
(such as the Finnish, the German, the English language); instead, they are likely to refer
to agency exercised through language-based acts (Watson 1995). Doing so may involve
the activation of meaning systems, and the use of particular discourses, conversations
and communications through which organizations are created, sustained and, potentially,
also terminated. For example, leaning on Foucauldian thinking, discourse is seen as an
historical ‘powerful ordering force’, through which ideas are formed and ordered into
systems of governance and discipline (Alvesson and Kärreman 2000: 1126–7). Discourses
are seen as being so powerful that they create and sustain author and subject positions.
TRANSLATION APPROACHES WITHIN ORGANIZATION STUDIES 121

Watson’s (1995) definition of discourse as systems and repositories of meanings that

become activated by human agency addresses the role of human interventions in activating
meanings in the pursuit of their individual, collective or organizational goals. Studies that
use this thinking tend to focus on daily social encounters to understand the relationships
between discourse, power and subjectivity (see Mueller and Whittle 2011).
Discourses are understood as being expressive of wider hegemonic struggles (Fairclough
1995: 128), which give rise to particular social structures and constellations of governance.
There are, of course, other takes on discourse, on how to apply it, and its usefulness to
organization studies. Despite some differences, there are common denominators that the
vast majority of organization studies scholars share. Their critical view of the construction
of organizations is the most central one: Actors are seen as situated in cultural, political
and historical contexts, rather than as objective or benevolent decision-makers without
vested interests. The use of language-based acts is seen as a vital resource for shaping
organizational worlds, in line with preferred perspectives – often taken to represent
dominant Western values (e.g. Ciuk and James 2015; Mir and Mir 2009). However,
despite this awareness of the use of discourse to make preferred outcomes happen, there
is little awareness of or interest in the role that languages (such as the English language,
the Finnish language, the Chinese language) may play in the construction process of
multilingual organizations.
This (English) monolingual orientation is shared by yet another stream of organization
studies scholars, who heed the performative role of communication and dialogue
between organizational actors. Communication constitutes organizations (CCO) studies
is conceptually related to discourse studies (Schoeneborn et al. 2019: 478). It shares the
intellectual heritage designed to ‘problematize the relationship between language and
social reality’ and shows this ‘relationship to be inherently processual, indeterminate, and
conflict-laden’ (476).
We are not overly concerned here with the differentiation between these approaches.
Instead, we wish to point out the intellectual richness and diversity of approaches that
organization studies has developed to understand ‘the world and every person’s situated
existence’ in relation to the availability, creation and use of language and discourse (Deetz
2003: 421). Consequently, most research explores communicative and discursive acts
through which organizations are seen to be constructed and, thus, come into existence
(Cooren et al. 2011). The most favoured epistemological orientation of organization
studies is constructionist; that is, the social world is viewed as an ongoing process, in
which agents, located in structures and contexts, negotiate, shape, discuss and also
contest the meanings that underpin social (and organizational) institutions. The majority
of organization studies scholars employ qualitative methodologies (Cassell and Symon
2004), which means that most empirical research projects are informed by un- or semi-
structured interviews or conversations and observations in ethnographic or case study
approaches. That said, there are also innovative lines of methodological enquiry that use
visual or other sensual data (Boxenbaum et al. 2018).
Of course, organization studies has also responded to globalization. Scholars study
how organizational practices, objects, knowledge and ideas move between different
societies and institutional contexts and, in particular, across national and cultural
borders. This question has been approached using several different concepts, such as
recontextualization (e.g. Meyer 2014), hybridization and bricolage (Frenkel 2008), as
well as translation (Czarniawska and Sevón 1996). Increasingly, scholars opt to use the
122 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

concept of translation to describe the transformation and movement of organizational

practices, ideas, objects and people when they are transported from their point of origin
to ‘elsewhere’ (Røvik 2016; Wæraas and Nielsen 2016). We discuss this approach in a
separate section.

A WORD ABOUT THE USE OF ENGLISH IN

ORGANIZATION STUDIES
Organization studies is monolingual – it relies solely on English to express all possible
situated experiences and phenomena. Unintentionally or not, the consequence is
that many non-English and multilingual organizational contexts are ignored. In
general, organization studies does not find this monolingual status quo particularly
problematic – other than having to deal with the technical nuisance of translating data
or manuscripts into English for journal publications (Wilmot and Tietze forthcoming).
A subfield of organization studies – cross-cultural management – concerns itself with
differences and similarities in business and management practices based on analysis of
mainly national cultural dimensions. However, language is often seen to be a sideshow
of culture, with multilingualism featuring on the research agendas of few cross-cultural
researchers (for a contemporary exception, however, see D’Iribarne et al. 2020).
Of course, all academic disciplines are affected by the English language, at least in so
far as their endeavour is to have global reach (e.g. see Lillis and Curry 2010; Montgomery
2011). It is important to realize that business and management studies, in general, of
which organization studies is a major field, is even more an English-only discipline (Tietze
2018). This is because the earliest and still dominant centres of management knowledge
production are located in the United States (Westney and Piekkari 2020) and the UK.
Űsdiken (2010: 721) proposes that European management and organization research
is characterized by contending perspectives and research logics, with the United States
having been the core source of influence worldwide since the end of the Second World
War. The UK is seen as an influential secondary centre, with Western and Northern
European countries constituting a semi-periphery and some Central and Eastern European
countries the periphery (Űsdiken 2010). Despite developments in establishing bodies of
organization and management knowledge from other geopolitical locations (e.g. Africa,
Asia), the influence of the dominant centres and their language (English) is still unbroken
(Boussebaa and Tienari 2021).
For the authors of other chapters and the readership of this book, which represent many
different disciplinary areas, we believe that the above excursion on the role of English
was necessary to appreciate why organization studies scholars tend to use translation as a
concept for framing organizational change and transformation, rather than as a linguistic
practice. The field has largely not engaged with phenomena of language plurality and
interlingual translation (or interpreting) as concomitant phenomena of globalization.
Instead, organization studies scholars have developed conceptual approaches to
understanding translation as a metaphor for agentic sense-making. Doolin et al. (2013:
259) refer to this monolingual status as ‘colonization’ through translation, by which they
mean the ‘dominance of an American world view in management knowledge, and the
silencing of other ways of organizing’. We see this non-treatment of language plurality
and interlingual translation as problematic and as a legacy of the continuing influence of
English-speaking centres of management knowledge production and values embedded in
neoliberal market values, irrespective of social and political contexts.
TRANSLATION APPROACHES WITHIN ORGANIZATION STUDIES 123

In summary, organization studies espouses a constructionist epistemology and is

concerned with understanding how situated agency shapes organizations through the
marshalling of discourse-based resources, mainly in micro-settings. Its main thematic focus
is on organizational change and the use and role of power as it unfolds and manifests in
these processes. The disciplinary field is mainly monolingual (English) and at least partly
translation-blind. Its responses to phenomena relating to globalization have mainly been
to develop bodies of knowledge around (national) cultures and comparative approaches.
It has yet to engage fully with language plurality, including explorations of interlingual
translation.

TRANSLATION APPROACHES IN
ORGANIZATION STUDIES
We now turn to literature which aligns the concept of translation with an understanding
and conceptualization of organizational change. We begin by discussing a special issue
that was published in 2013, and which was accompanied by an editorial paper in which
new trajectories for the use of translation in organizational change literatures were set.
This collection of six empirical papers in the Journal of Change Management was titled
Translating Translation and Change: Discourse-based Approaches; it was edited by
Doolin, Grant and Thomas. This collection is of interest to this chapter, as it integrates
different language-based approaches (namely, discourse and communication) with
translation as a conceptually new take on the discursive-communicative construction
of organizations. As mentioned earlier, organizational change is mainly researched and
theorized through discourse-based studies that focus on the use of discursive resources, on
the one hand, and communication-based studies focusing on language-based exchanges
between organizational actors, on the other hand. These approaches overlap strongly, as
they share the same epistemological orientation and a strong focus on micro-settings and
concomitant methodologies. Thus, there is more commonality than difference between
discourse and communication-sensitive scholars.

Translation as organizational change

In special issue of Journal of Change Management, translation is conceptualized from
a translation-as-organizational-change perspective, that is, as a means to understand
organizational change. Doolin et al. (2013) stress the creativity of translation in the context
of organizational change. Discursively oriented approaches to organizational change see
‘organizing as arising from, and comprising, ongoing, iterative, and recursive process of
translation’ (Doolin et al. 2013: 253), through which new meanings are introduced and
taken up in organizations. Translation is understood ‘to be the modifying, adjusting, and
changing of specific change initiatives by particular actors in context in relation to their
particular agendas’ (Doolin et al. 2013: 253).
Focusing on discursive approaches to the study of organizational change, Doolin et al.
read extant organizational change literature from a translation perspective and offer a
categorization of translation-as-change in terms of how it is used in the organizational
change literature. It is important to note that not all the organizational change literature
reviewed by these authors actually uses the term ‘translation’ in any systematic way,
nor do any of the papers published in the special issue develop deep theoretical insights
into translation-as-practice. Rather, the respective authors frame their empirical findings
124 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

through using translation as part of their vocabulary, with the main understanding of
translation being descriptive, expressive and useful to engage with for analysing processes
of organizational change. Based on their reading of extant organizational change
literature, together with the six published papers included in the special issue, the editors
demonstrate that it is possible to establish six different approaches to translation that are
discernible in the discursive and communication-oriented change literature.
The first of these six approaches is ‘translation as engagement’. It sees organizations
as conversationally constructed realities, and organizational change is achieved through
change agents who facilitate a change in the conversations. In other words, translation
is viewed as part of changing organizational conversations to an ongoing dialogue.
This approach stresses the importance of dialogue in the change process, and the co-
construction of meanings by organizational members. Both change agents and change
recipients are engaged in initiating effective change. The second approach, ‘translation
as endless transmutations’, is also focused on the organization, as an emerging
achievement of the process of ongoing conversations, which are regarded as translations
in themselves. The authors explain that ‘translation can be understood as endless
transmutations as the organisation forms and reforms in communicative interaction’
(Doolin et al. 2013: 256).
Such a conversational and communicative process is always accompanied by struggles
regarding meanings and is, therefore, caught up in relations of power. Doolin et al. relate
to this as ‘translation as struggle’, and different actors bring their perspectives, values and
vested interests to the ongoing negotiations. In these micro-processes, change can also be
resisted, subverted and appropriated. ‘Translation as translocation’ is, in turn, concerned
with ‘the movement of meanings across space and times to bring about institutional change’
(Doolin et al. 2013: 257). The fourth approach is called the ‘translocation approach’ and
it stresses that, through the translation of new meanings across institutional boundaries,
meanings are not merely spread but actively reshaped as they move across time and
space. The fifth approach, ‘translation as transgression’, highlights the importance of also
targeting change discourse from a resistance perspective. Resistance can be individual or
collective and may be displayed through humour, irony, cynicism, satire and so forth.
The last approach is titled ‘translation as colonization’. In this case, the editors turn to
the production of knowledge about organizations and the use of language (English) in
the research process, and point to issues of privileging English-language scholarship.
They base their critique on assumptions that such scholarship can be universally applied
across cultures.
These six approaches are a useful starting point to describe the complexities that
accompany organizational change. Doolin et al. point out that many of the approaches
identified overlap. Indeed, we could add that, at times, they even conflate completely. For
example, we see ‘translation as transgression’ to be closely related to the ‘translation as
struggle’ approach, as it acknowledges translation as a way through which resistance to
change can be expressed and enacted. The former approach also explores ‘other voices’
(Doolin et al. 2013: 259) such as those of subordinates or managers in translating change
initiatives for their own interest, and the means they deploy to do so. While the six
approaches are useful descriptors, they are not as yet finely honed analytical categories.
A quick citation analysis also confirms this: Most scholars citing this paper use it to
justify their conceptualization of organizational change as discourse rather than to make
nuanced distinctions between approaches to translation. Yet, this categorization can
inform the reading of the organizational change literature, as well as guide future research.
TRANSLATION APPROACHES WITHIN ORGANIZATION STUDIES 125

For example, it would be interesting to investigate how and to which consequence the
different approaches to translation interlink and interact. These approaches also serve as
a useful heuristics to expand the vocabulary of organizational studies.

Scandinavian institutionalism
A lasting contribution to the translation approach was made by Scandinavian
institutionalism (Czarniawska and Sevón 1996; 2005) – a school of thought inspired by
actor network theory (Callon 1986; Latour 1986). As its name indicates, Scandinavian
institutionalism initially consisted of the work of scholars based in Sweden, Denmark and
Norway (Brunsson 1989; Brunsson and Olsen 1993; Czarniawska and Joerges 1996;
Czarniawska and Sevón 1996; 2005; Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall 2002; Boxenbaum
and Pedersen 2009; Wedlin and Sahlin 2017). It has developed a clear definition of
translation in response to the movement and change of meanings, ideas, practices, objects
and resources across the globe. It is also an influential school of thought, and its definition
of translation continues to be adopted by organizational researchers. As an intellectual
project, it is more strongly committed to translation than the discursive-communicative
approaches developed by other organization studies research.
By translation, Scandinavian institutionalism scholars understand the ‘modification that
a practice or an idea undergoes when it is implemented in a new organisational context’
(Boxenbaum and Pedersen 2009: 190–1). Such contexts can entail the same language
environment (e.g. the implementation of a private sector practice, such as performance
management, within a public sector setting in an English-speaking domain), but also two
different contexts, when practices generated within a particular cultural and language
context are transported into a culturally and linguistically different one. In this regard,
Scandinavian institutionalism corresponds to the ‘translation as translocation’ approach
proposed by Doolin et al. (2013).
Such translocation processes are, of course, always characterized by uncertainty
and are expressive of the ‘ambiguity of change’ in organizations (Czarniawska 2008:
772). Understanding translation as a process triggered by movement and relocation
of practices and their reception at different locations provides an explanation for why
organizational practices are distinct, rather than becoming isomorphic and standardized
in an organizational field (Boxenbaum and Pedersen 2009). Organizational practices are
understood as a bundle of routines and actions, such as diversity management (Boxenbaum
2006), quality circles (Saka 2004), total quality management (Erçek and Say 2008) or lean
management (MacDuffie and Helper 1999) that are used to accomplish a certain task and
often meant to render the organization more effective and modern, making it, in turn,
also more standardized.
Organizational scholars have stressed the need to develop ‘a micro-level component
of institutional analysis’ and connect macro-framings with mundane practice (Powell and
Colyvas 2008: 271). Scandinavian institutionalism researchers study the agency of local
actors as ‘translators’ who actively receive, transform and spread organizational practices
to fit local agendas and who render foreign ideas understandable and meaningful for local
practice (Czarniawska and Sevón 1996; 2005; Boxenbaum 2006). These local actors have
also been conceptualized as carriers (Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall 2002) and editors
(Sahlin-Andersson 1996) of knowledge, as well as boundary-spanners, who enable
knowledge to transfer across boundaries (Barner-Rasmussen et al. 2014; Søderberg and
Romani 2017). Thus, translation work, like other institutional work, is characterized
126 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

by ‘embedded agency’ (Battilana and D’Aunno 2009), which ordinary employees and
managers, external organizational consultants, or even friends or family members of
employees mobilize to get their work done (Piekkari et al. 2013). The empirical paper
by Mueller and Whittle (2011), published in the journal Organisation Studies and titled
‘Translating Management Ideas: A Discursive Devices Analysis’, provides a typical
application of the ideas expressively contributed by Scandinavian institutionalism. The
paper is located in a monolingual (English) environment and investigates how management
ideas (total quality management) are translated in a private-public partnership. It
demonstrates how – in meeting conversations, and also informal conversations over
the coffee machine – skilful agents activate a series of discursive-rhetorical devices
through which the (new) meaning of total quality management is translated into the
new organizational context. The authors execute a discursive devices analysis (a method
to distil rhetorical expressions from naturally occurring talk) of how management ideas
about quality improvement are employed by two individual organizational agents. These
agents render the incoming practices of quality management derived from the private
sector palatable to the recipient audience, that is, employees in the public sector. The
authors identify particular discursive devices that the two agents use (e.g. display of
empathy/sympathy, footing, categorization, concession, spontaneity), with a view to
introducing the notion of quality improvements as necessary, important and legitimate
in observed training meetings. This approach to analysis of talk locates the study, in the
first instance, as a discourse-based one. However, the totality of the discursive devices is
framed as a skilful translation process, in which several participants exchange views and
perspectives. This process is ultimately (rhetorically) managed by the two key agents, who
are also tasked with enabling the implementation of new practices. Translation refers
to the translation process whereby incoming practices are received, made sense of and
integrated into existing practice through dialogue.
Many studies in Scandinavian institutionalism happen to have been conducted in
multilingual organizations, such as multinational corporations (MNC), although this
setting does not receive much attention. Becker-Ritterspach et al. (2010) studied two
subsidiaries (in the UK and Germany) within a Dutch MNC and focused on determining
why these subsidiaries had developed such different learning strategies. While the study
adopted, in general, Scandinavian institutionalist ideas about the importance of local
actors in receiving and implementing an incoming practice, it also contains empirical
data that points to interlingual translation work. For example, in the German subsidiary,
an initiative labelled ‘Star Trek’ was translated into nichts ist unmöglich [nothing is
impossible], in order to gain the cooperation of the local workforce. The reason was
that it was believed that an Americanized appeal to the pioneering spirit of the space-
bound founding fathers would not be well received by the German workforce; thus, this
possible unease with the American title was resolved through an interlingual translation.
The interlingual translation act here deletes the original meaning and replaces it with
local ones. The main themes of this study are embedded in social learning theory and
theorized within the translation approach of Scandinavian institutionalism, as showing
that ‘learning is intimately connected to translation’ (Becker-Ritterspach et al. 2010: 30).
As the German case shows, the institutionalization of new practices means that local
actors need to translate these practices interlingually into their own languages, meanings
and practices, if people are to identify with them and render them their own.
Another example is provided by Meyer and Höllerer (2010), who studied how the
concept of ‘shareholder value’ was received in an institutional-cultural context (Austria)
where economic stakeholder models prevail. They found that the concept of shareholder
TRANSLATION APPROACHES WITHIN ORGANIZATION STUDIES 127

value changed when it moved from an Anglo-American context to Austria; this change
was partly brought about through interlingual translation. It is reported that the
German translation of the English term was more ambiguously framed than the original,
accentuating the local tradition of a strong stakeholder approach to governance. The
authors interpreted the interlingual translation process as a deliberate attempt to protect
the local meaning and values from incoming meanings of shareholder values. In this
regard, the translatorial skopos was oriented to protecting the local meaning in light of
the powerful incoming meanings of shareholder value discourses.
Neither of the two studies we introduced above concerns itself directly with
interlingual translation. The authors may present individual words or phrases rather than
more extensive textual features (e.g. style or tone). Their use of interlingual translation
can almost be likened to a cunning ‘smuggling in’ of some of the local meanings, values
and perspectives. For example, in the study by Meyer and Höllerer (2010), the dominant,
original concepts in English are translated into the local language, and through this act of
translation they are also changed. While these scholars show awareness of the existence
of interlingual translation acts and subsequent changes in meanings, and their studies
contain empirical examples of important adjusting or challenging aspects performed
through translation activity, they do not seriously engage with it.
Our discussion has shown that, while Scandinavian institutionalism does acknowledge
the interlingual meaning of translation, it is certainly not explicitly investigated or
theorized. In fact, the founding authors explicitly distanced themselves from this
view (Czarniawska and Sevón 1996), thus, leaving Scandinavian institutionalism a
monolingual school of thought. Interestingly, Scandinavian institutionalism scholars
initially developed their approach in relative isolation, because research in this tradition
was often published in Swedish or Danish (Boxenbaum and Pedersen 2009). Choosing
Swedish or Danish as the language of publication meant that, due to lack of translation,
English-language audiences of management scholarship could not immediately access
the knowledge generated by this group of researchers. This legacy may explain why the
actual language component is elided and collection of multilingual data is not part of
research design in this tradition – obliging readers rely on the authors’ interpretation.
Translators in Scandinavian institutionalism often just happen to be bilingual or
otherwise have access to the language in which the incoming organizational practices
are expressed. From our perspective, the lack of multilingual data could be seen as a
missed opportunity.
In conclusion, we propose that organization studies uses translation ‘liberally’ as a
theoretical approach (as per Scandinavian institutionalism), a loose descriptor of changes
in meaning, or a conceptual approach stressing particular aspects of the change process
(as per Doolin et al. 2013). Organization studies is mainly monolingual in orientation and
relies – unreflexively – on the assumed, in-built ability of the English language to express
and capture all existing and potentially possible situations and events. Philosophically,
these approaches embrace constructionist epistemologies and have an interest in
language as used in contexts, where skilful acts of translation enable communicative
and dialogic exchanges upon which organizations are talked into being by individual or
collective agents.
In the next section, we present three recent studies in organization studies that explicitly
draw on interlingual translation and vocabulary from translation studies to understand
change processes in multilingual organizations. We take these three studies as indicative
that the field is starting to intellectually engage with translation in the interlingual sense,
and with the discipline of translation studies.
128 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

INTERLINGUAL TRANSLATION: APPLICATION AND

USE IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES
In this section, we look into three recently published papers that are oriented towards
translation studies, and provide a commentary on how the authors of these papers
applied the interlingual translation approach empirically in their research. The studies by
Ciuk et al. (2019) and Outila et al. (2020) draw on interlingual data, while Westney and
Piekkari (2020) undertake an historical analysis in order to understand the movement
and change of practices. They also integrate concepts and terminology from translation
studies to analyse and theorize their findings. Together, this set of studies is indicative of
a shift in the treatment of translation in the field.
The first study, by Ciuk et al. (2019), provides a fine-grained analysis of how new
corporate values in a US-owned subsidiary in Poland were translated into the local context
and into the local language – the translation process was from English to Polish. This
interlingual process was enmeshed with the translation of values, through which these
values became localized. When expressed in English, these corporate values reflected
North American views and raised inappropriate or undesirable connotations locally.
Therefore, a group of Polish subsidiary managers had to engage with these incoming
values and rethink and re-establish what they meant, and how they could be made sense
of and implemented in a Polish context. These managers deliberately redesigned the
corporate values to facilitate the desired outcome among the Polish subsidiary employees,
that is, attitudinal and behavioural changes in line with expectations of the American
headquarters to improve subsidiary performance. While they were given considerable
discretion to translate, many of them were under the impression that they did not have
the option to disregard the corporate perspective to any great extent. The subsidiary
managers engaged in what can be called ‘accommodating interlingual translation’
(Piekkari et al. 2020: 1321), so that, overall, the understandings of the US headquarters
were given priority over Polish meanings. Thus, this is a case of literally translating the
language in which the corporate values were expressed and localizing the meaning of
these values in the new context.
Empirically, this study draws on rich data gathered in the Polish subsidiary of the US-
based MNC through personal interviews, scrutiny of company documents and formal
observations of a six-hour team translation session. Furthermore, one of the authors was
a participant-observer in the translation session, which generated additional insight in the
intricacies of the translation process. Conceptually, the paper refers to translation studies
(Vermeer 1996: 136) to understand interlingual translation as a tool for power.
The Ciuk et al. (2019) paper is highly significant for organization studies, because it
uses interlingual translation, as observed in the meeting and the collective translation
of US English to Polish to demonstrate how, in these allegedly ‘innocent’ or ‘neutral’
acts of translation, power relationships representing headquarters-subsidiary hierarchies
were enacted through translation processes that the authors categorize as purposing,
reframing, domesticating and inscribing. Through these processes, meanings are adjusted,
but in such a way that the preferred meanings of the more powerful headquarters remain
intact, yet become sufficiently acceptable to Polish recipients. This was achieved through
interlingual translation acts – acts which are, by and large, still ignored by organization
studies, but which are shown to be as important in setting trajectories as other discursive
devices, means, recontextualization processes or editing work previously identified
by scholars. Within multilingual organizational settings, it can be presumed that such
TRANSLATION APPROACHES WITHIN ORGANIZATION STUDIES 129

interlingual translation acts are ongoing and multifaceted and constitute organizations as
much as other forms of communication.
The second study, by Outila et al. (2020), reports how middle managers in a Russian
subsidiary translate empowerment – a ‘Western’ management concept imposed by the
Finnish headquarters of the MNC. Empowerment refers to a set of practices that gives
power to someone in a subordinate position. In Russia, managers are less expected to
share power with their subordinates, because the country is characterized by authoritative
leadership (Fey and Shekshnia 2011). As there is no equivalent term for empowerment
in Russian, middle managers ended up translating this concept both literally and
metaphorically during research interviews. They mobilized proverbs to address competing
discourses of what is considered ‘good management’ in Russia and the Western world.
Although the disciplinary convention is to publish in English only, the authors made the
use of Russian visible in some of the transliteral and idiomatic translations of the proverbs.
The authors explain in detail the methodological challenges of translating proverbs
from Russian to English, and document the collective effort of several rounds of
translation during which both professional and paraprofessional translators were involved.
The authors highlight the value of proverbs as an understudied discursive resource in
translation activities on the ground. The paper also examines the dual role of middle
managers, as both translators and implementers of an imported and imposed concept in a
local subsidiary. The study is of interest for organizational scholars, as it documents how
ongoing translation processes were part of data analysis in multilingual research. During
data analysis, researchers were linguistically challenged to translate Russian proverbs
into English and engaged in extended translation work, including the involvement of a
professional interpreter, and also a proofreader.
First, this study demonstrates how the lack of equivalence of meaning of particular
concepts between different languages (see also Xian 2008, Tietze et al. 2017) causes
complexities when implementing practices expressed in words that do not exist in
another language context. Second, Outila et al. (2020) provide a rare insight into the
open-endedness and collective nature of the translation process of data when reporting
findings from a non-English context to English-speaking audiences. Detailing the
translation process in full is an aspect yet to be explored by the reporting protocols of
organization studies.
The third paper, by Westney and Piekkari (2020), is a historical case study of the
movement of organizational practices from Japan to the United States from the 1970s
through the mid-1990s. The study examines the challenges caused by reversing the
translation flow of management knowledge, which, since the Second World War, had
been overwhelmingly from the United States to the rest of the world. Due to the deep-
reaching societal, cultural, political and institutional differences between the sending
and receiving contexts, both American and Japanese translators struggled to move
Japanese management models into the United States. Moving management models and
practices from Japan – which was long viewed by Americans as a ‘copycat’ and imitator
of American models – into the very different social context of the United States was
an unusual case of ‘reversing the translation flow’. The Westney and Piekkari (2020)
study drew on translation studies to make several contributions to the organizational
translation approach.
Organizational translation scholars have studied the movement of American
management models and practices to other societies in terms of two types of paraprofessional
translators. The first is the set of management consultants, academics and practitioners
who construct general models of ‘best practice’ based on American organizations (e.g.
130 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Sahlin-Andersson and Engwall 2002). Westney and Piekkari (2020) observe that these
translators created different general models of ‘Japanese management’, depending on
managers’ field of expertise. For example, operations management experts produced
models focusing on Japanese operations management practices, using the terminology
and concepts of their field, whereas human resource management experts observing
the same Japanese factories saw practices through the filter of their discipline. The
researchers paid attention to work teams, shared incentives and training, people-centric
managers and lifetime employment as the key success factors in Japanese management.
Westney and Piekkari (2020) call this group ‘indirect translators’. The second group of
translators, on which previous organizational translation scholars had focused, were what
might be called ‘receiver translators’: Those who are actively engaged in trying to move
the imported Japanese models into actual practices in local American organizations (e.g.
Boxenbaum 2006; Wæraas and Sataøen 2014).
The employees of Japanese companies that were setting up factories in the United
States (especially automobile factories, which were so effective in moving practices from
the Japanese parent plant to the United States that they were called ‘transplants’) were
identified as ‘direct translators’. They were sent into the subsidiaries in remarkably large
numbers to take practices that they knew first-hand from their own experience directly
into practice on the factory floor in the United States. Because these translators were
engaged in taking very specific practices into the receiving organization and demonstrating
them directly to American employees, Westney and Piekkari (2020) call them ‘direct
translators’.
Another insight provided by the lengthy period covered by Westney and Piekkari’s
study relates to the importance of sustained interaction over time across translators,
translations, and translation processes. The authors drew on the concept of a ‘translation
ecology’, which had recently been proposed by Wedlin and Sahlin (2017), to investigate
how, over time, translators both built on and contested previous translations. In this way,
the translators positioned and differentiated the new translations, creating a dynamic
‘translation ecosystem’. Audiences too frequently ‘read’ the new translations in terms of
their relationship with earlier, often established, translations, as the Japanese context became
more familiar to them. For both these processes – the interactions between translators
and audiences, and the development of the translation ecosystem – Westney and Piekkari
(2020) drew on Venuti’s (1995; 2013) typology of foreignization and domestication.
To sum up, these papers are, as far as we know, rare examples of empirical analyses
that borrow directly from translation studies as a means to investigate the reception
process of imported organizational practices. They emphasize the multifaceted nature of
translation work undertaken in MNCs and beyond. These studies draw implicitly on the
core concept of translators’ skopos1 – the purpose or goal of translation work – which
underscores the purposeful nature of translation work. They also highlight the role of
paraprofessional interlingual translators who engage in translation activities alongside
their recognized organizational role and who are, therefore, more extensively embedded
in the organizational reality than translation professionals. Because of their double role,
these translators are more likely to use their agency in translation work (Piekkari et al.
2020). Finally, the three papers deal with the issue of translator (in)visibility. They
challenge the common understanding of interlingual translation as a mere mechanistic
act and, instead, make visible translators’ agentic role and active involvement in meaning-
making. Table 7.1 summarizes how the three articles borrow from translation studies.
TRANSLATION APPROACHES WITHIN ORGANIZATION STUDIES 131

TABLE 7.1 Borrowing from translation studies to organization studies:

Three examples
How the example
articles borrow
from translation Ciuk, James and Outila, Piekkari and Westney and Piekkari
studies Śliwa (2019) Mihailova (2020) (2020)
Research Why did the subsidiary How to study How does the
question(s) of the managers pursue empowerment for movement of
article particular interests and which there is no organizational
agendas when translating word in the languages practices from Japan
corporate values from of the fieldwork? (a peripheral country)
English to Polish? into the United
How did translation States (the centre
contribute to the of management
unfolding of subsidiary- knowledge
level micropolitics? production) develop
over time, when the
Japanese society is so
unfamiliar with the
Americans in terms
of culture, language,
social structure and
history?
Use of interlingual Interlingual translation Interlingual Interlingual
translation provides an internal translation of translation is used
forum for the exercise of Russian proverbs to show how
micropolitics into English presents American and
methodological Japanese translators
opportunities and struggled to address
challenges in data the enormous
collection and challenges of making
analysis organizational
practices from a
distant and unfamiliar
culture such as
Japan accessible and
acceptable for the
receivers
Traces of Original Polish Transliteral and Transliterated
multilingual data management idiomatic translations Japanese management
in the published terminology left visible of the Russian terminology left
article in the use of direct proverbs left visible visible in the text;
quotations from field in the published some original
data; Polish pseudonyms article Japanese sources
of research participants referred to
used in the text
132 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

How the example

articles borrow
from translation Ciuk, James and Outila, Piekkari and Westney and Piekkari
studies Śliwa (2019) Mihailova (2020) (2020)
Concepts from Collective interlingual Literal translation; Paraprofessional
translation studies translation; idiomatic translation; translator; direct
domestication; professional translation;
functionally translator indirect translation;
communicative; foreignization;
linguistic equivalence; domestication;
target text; translatorial audience
action; source text
Examples of Chesterman (2006); Implicit Bassnett (2014);
sources from Hermans (1985); Venuti (1995; 2013)
translation studies Holz-Mänttäri (1984);
Munday (2016);
Schleiermacher (1992);
Risku (2002); Tymoczko
(2013); Tymoczko and
Gentzler (2002); Venuti
(2008); Vermeer (1996)

DISCUSSION
‘Translation’ is an attractive term that is increasingly being used by organizational scholars.
Often, it is used in quite a loose way – a synonym for organizational change and for
describing change processes, including the movement of ideas and practices across time
and space. Translation, if understood as interlingual translation enacted in multilingual
organizational contexts, is hardly integrated into organization studies’ intellectual
project. We consider this to be a serious omission, as many even domestically located
organizations have pockets of multilingual activities within workforces, administration
and supply chains, let alone customer bases and markets. In this regard, it is not only the
MNCs that are multilingual in essence.
We regard the three studies we reviewed above as indicative of a new stream of
inquiry that takes into account the existence of multilingual phenomena. Their existence
is important for integrating language plurality and interlingual translation into the
vocabulary and projects of organization studies scholars. While useful, we critique the
approaches developed by Doolin et al. (2013) as relatively vague and conflating. In
multilingual settings, other studies have fine-tuned the change work achieved through
the (hidden) means of interlingual translation and provided categories for establishing
new meanings, such as purposing, reframing, domesticating and inscribing (Ciuk
et al. 2019). As a way forward, one wonders whether it becomes possible to bring
together some of the categories developed by Doolin et al. (2013) with the functions of
interlingual translation identified by Ciuk et al. (2019). In this way, a more sophisticated
understanding of interlingual translation in multilingual settings could emerge: For
example, could ‘repurposing’ be used to shed light on ‘translation as struggle’, as one of
TRANSLATION APPROACHES WITHIN ORGANIZATION STUDIES 133

the organizational change realities? A strong engagement with issues of power, whether
individual or institutional, is an important step forward for organization studies in terms
of including how it plays out in multilingual settings. Westney and Piekkari (2020),
for example, stress that MNCs are powerful socio-political institutions and highlight
their role as important players in the wider ‘translation ecology’. MNCs are engaged
in managing and coordinating subunits located in different societies and cultures, and
these activities include the rejection of old translations and the production of new
ones. Thus, their power base and their exercise of power could be conceptualized as
the movement of translations across space and time, and introducing meanings and
practices in new contexts. In this regard, the meeting of multiple languages in and
around an MNC serves as a ‘translation incubator’ for developing managers who serve
as organizational – and often interlingual – translators and for testing and refining
translations for different audiences. At some point, subsidiary employees may experience
‘translation fatigue’ from successive waves of change initiatives, each involving yet
another set of translated practices.
Piekkari et al. (2020) opened up a theoretical position; they attempt to align
metaphorical translation (as movement of knowledge, resources and ideas across different
settings, and consequent sense-making at the recipient location) with interlingual
translation when such movement involves the crossing of language boundaries. They
offer a matrix that outlines the mutually constitutive relationship between interlingual
and metaphorical translation, where each can have a high or low occurrence. They are
seen as dependent on each other, with their respective dominance in different settings
influencing the extent to which agency can be exercised. Here, moving forward, it may
be possible to populate their matrix with voices that are included or excluded from the
constitution of multilingual work contexts; mapping their translatorial agency may yield
more depth of understanding of their involvement in this complex relationship. It would
also be an avenue to integrate a key theme of discursive studies – that is, that of power,
voice and agency – into their enactment in multilingual contexts.
These themes have also been widely studied in translation studies, and much fruitful
shared ground could be found. Koskinen (2020) offers a conceptual innovation informed
by translation studies research to understand multilingual organizations as translatorial
spaces, where different agents require different kinds of translation work to be done
or are involved in executing it. The range of translation activity extends itself, from
formal translation of written texts by professional translators, to the more fuzzy and
widespread ad hoc translation or interpreting work undertaken by individuals or
collectives, including management. These agents happen to have language competence in
both source and target languages, and are able and willing to engage in meaning creation
across languages, either to support inclusion or to actively direct the translation process
in the direction they prefer. While, in many multinational organizations, professional
translation is a more or less structured and visible activity, informal translatorial actions
often unfold in an uncontrolled and hidden manner. Employees may resort to ingenious
workarounds (Piekkari et al. 2013), or take translator roles flexibly (Koskela et al. 2017)
and use interlingual translation as a tool for micro-political hidden power, which is often
strengthened because of the smokescreen created by language skills other members lack
(see Koskinen 2020).
As we discussed above, organization studies has a strong preference for qualitative
research, and interviews are often used to elicit information from the ground. Interviews
can reveal important attitudinal and pragmatic aspects related to translation work, but by
134 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

overlooking the comparative language evidence, this work leaves many elements outside
the focus of research. Koskinen (2020) proposes linguistic ethnography, and, in particular,
translatorial linguistic ethnography (her neologism), as a methodological tool for including
the empirical evidence from the field. We support the idea of interdisciplinary research
to combine organizational studies scholars’ in-depth understanding of the processes of
organizing with translation scholars’ expertise on translation strategies and translator
positions and how these play out in the minutiae of linguistic data.

CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we presented the field of enquiry called organization studies and
investigated its treatment of translation, in order to document, understand and analyse
the emergence and changing constitution of work organizations and institutions. We
showed that this field has yet to engage fully with the existence of multiple languages
and translation, though some promising foundations to do so are currently being laid.
Overall, we saw organization studies’ reluctance to engage with language plurality and
interlingual translation as expressive of the continuing influence of the powerful centres
of knowledge production in and through the English language. However, in light of
a recent editorial essay in Organization Studies (the key European journal), we remain
optimistic that contemporary projects aimed at integrating interlingual translation into
organizational analysis will bear fruit (Hjorth et al. 2019: 1779):

the responsibility [of organisational scholars] remains to bring together different

(intellectual rather than geographic) communities and to warrant that quieter voices
and silenced themes are heard. In this respect, there is a difference between lingua
franca and a dominant language. Attention to quieter voices and silenced themes means
that the requirement to be reflexive about language, translation, and the visibility of
multiple linguistic communities of practice in academia is even more pressing today.

The new voices in organization studies have found relevant theoretical support in
translation studies. The next fruitful step might be methodological borrowing. Translation-
sensitive scholars in organization studies have become increasingly aware of the power
and agency vested in translatorial activities, and also the need to pay attention to who
the recipients are and how their expectations and knowledge bases shape the translation
process. Translation studies can offer a variety of methods, both in comparative text
analysis and in studying the reception of translation, that will enable ever more fine-tuned
analyses of translation work in organizations.
Continued exchange of ideas will be equally beneficial for translation scholars.
Although it has, since the 1980s, become a truism to emphasize that translation never
happens in a vacuum and that the context always shapes the intentions and the outcomes
of translation work, research that fully combines a metalevel contextual understanding
of organization work with a detailed analysis of translatorial decisions is still rare. While
translation studies can help organization studies to engage with empirical linguistic
evidence of translation, organization studies and its metaphorical and practice-oriented
understanding of translation can, in return, help translation studies to reconnect with
the idea of contextualization. This would allow translation scholars to link interlingual
translation to core organizational processes of value creation and meaning-making.
TRANSLATION APPROACHES WITHIN ORGANIZATION STUDIES 135

Considering the trajectory of organization studies, on the one hand, moving towards an
increased understanding of the actual linguistic practices in multilingual processes, and
translation studies, on the other hand, becoming ever more keen to explore the intralingual
and intersemiotic areas of Jakobson’s (2000) tripartite model, reveals a disciplinary
chiasma that deserves further study. When other disciplines turn to translation studies,
translation scholars maintain no particular advantage in understanding and theorizing
the wider contextualization of translation. Instead, scholars from neighbouring fields are
coming to translation studies to find answers to questions, such as the role and limits of
equivalence, the interplay of the local and the foreign, and the issue of translational agency
and shifts of meaning in interlingual translation – that is, the traditional core elements
of translation research. The joy and the pain of interdisciplinary collaboration lies in
pushing oneself to rethink and reconsider the fundamentals of one’s own field. While
the future of translation studies will no doubt lie in expanding the notion of translation
further, it also has a unique contribution to make to any field interested in understanding
interlingual communication through decades of empirical work on prototypical written
and spoken interlingual translations, and translators in a multitude of contexts.
In conclusion, organization studies is well equipped to understand the ongoing
constitutions of organizations through discourse and ongoing acts of communications.
The theoretical, philosophical and empirical foundations for this sophisticated
understanding have already been laid. In going forward, we wish for organization studies
to also include communications across languages, translation as well as the use of English
in its intellectual project, to provide deeper insights in the communicative construction of
multilingual organizations.

NOTE
1 In a sister paper to the 2019 article, Ciuk and James (2015) explicitly draw on skopos theory.

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140
 PART III

Translation in the
Humanities
142
 CHAPTER EIGHT

Literary Translation in
Electronic Literature and
Digital Humanities
CHRIS TANASESCU AND RALUCA TANASESCU

This chapter explores to what extent and in what ways, specifically, translation in
electronic literature and digital literary studies (DLS) is or can be perceived as being
alternative to established literary translation theory and practice. The two main axes
along which we will measure the specificity of such translation are:
1. Literature – the electronic genre, as well as computationally processed, analysed,
and (re)configured literature; and
2. Technology – artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, both in media-
inflected frameworks and environments pertaining to the digital, the Web and
mathematical modelling.
The numerous particular features of literary translation in electronic literature and
DLS problematize the limited definitions it customarily receives within the confines of
its parent field. In translation studies, literary translation is defined as all that is opposed
to free or literal translation, which has an aesthetic effect (Hermans 2007), and that is
temporally and spatially distanced from its source text (Boase-Beier et al. 2014). The
binary of a literary ‘original’ by an author pertaining to another culture and, usually, to
another time period, of which another person, a translator, produces a literary translation
decidedly shapes cultural transfers via translation. According to Dirk Delabastita, another
characteristic of literary translation is related to reception and to the ‘afterlives’ of a
literary text, ‘one of the many ways in which a text can “live on” beyond the linguistic and
cultural milieu of its origin and find ever new readerships, thereby releasing or prompting
new meanings in the process’ (2011: 69). Literary translation follows predictable literary
flows, dictated by the global circulation of print books, submitted to patterns of import,
seen as enhancing the status of the target language, and oftentimes analysed in contexts
that are highly dependent on power and cultural identity dynamics.
While the aesthetic effect in e-literature (e-lit) and DLS is still a requirement of literary
text translation, the temporal and spatial distance from a ‘source’ text can be erased and
the afterlife of a text is oftentimes dictated by the author of the ‘original’ text, who may
also act as the translator. Even when such distances are present and enacted by translation
(see, for instance, the case of Karhio’s translation of Carpenter’s below), in e-lit and
144 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

DLS they are quintessentially computer-code, digital-technology and media informed.

Most importantly, technology and code condition the process of creating literature and
have a lasting imprint on the translation of such texts. Thus, we set out to discuss the
alternativeness of literary translation in the context of electronic literature and DLS as
enabling a new mode of writing literature, doing translation and carrying out literary and
translation scholarship, which, for now, translation studies may consider as an alternative,
but which are actually reflective of a hyperdigital and hypermediated reality that has been
around for the past twenty years and is here to stay as ‘a sort of social, conscious agent: a
sentient non-human’ (Mihalache 2021: 20).
However (more, less or potentially) closely related from the point of view of literary
translation they may appear at first sight, e-lit, digital humanities (DH) and translation
studies define and relate to this type of transfer in completely different ways, because
their own definitions as humanistic fields of inquiry differ considerably. On the one hand,
electronic literature is ‘a transnational (thus translingual), interdisciplinary, and multimodal
practice’ (di Rosario and Borràs 2012: 138), resulting in ‘works with important literary
aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone
or networked computer’ (ELO web) and animated by an electropoetics that acknowledges
and takes immediate advantage of the role played by corporate and technological factors
in relation to literary aesthetics (Pressman 2014). On the other hand, a very generous
definition of DH places it at the nexus between traditional scholarship and computation,
thus, leveraging both digitized and born-digital materials with traditionally humanistic
and computational methodologies. This ‘big-tent’ definition of DH would normally
include electronic literature, since they share the philosophy ‘that a computer is not a
tool or prosthesis that helps [them] to accomplish [their] work; rather, it is the medium
in which [they] work’ (Grigar 2021); however, although many other practitioners suggest
that e-lit is indeed a chapter of DH (Rettberg 2019, di Rosario and Borràs 2012), this
niche sub-field of literary studies has always valued its autonomy and has made the case,
via translation, among other things, for autonomous e-lit work preservation and local
field expansion. Translation is performed in order to preserve an ‘original’ and to help
the community of e-lit practitioners expand outside the global north. As we will see in
the following sections, e-lit authors’ positioning in relation to translation is one of the
key differences between e-lit and DH, much in the way digital literature is different from
digital scholarship. Last, but not least, the all-encompassing tent of translation studies for
all matters related to translation seems to be slow in waking up to the relevance of any
computational methodologies (Tanasescu 2021; St. André 2018) and to ignore, in the
process, a slew of new perspectives that could enlarge the field’s understanding of what
literary translation is in contemporary literature and scholarship. Although these three
fields definitely share an interest in the lingual, medial and creative aspects of translation,
it is the computational aspect (or the coding involved) – ‘how a particular digital text/
machine functions and is implemented, from interface through function and code to
platform’ (Montfort 2018: 2) – that appears to keep translation studies at bay. Coding
alone, then, would be enough to consider translation in e-lit and DH as alternative to
literary translation; nevertheless, this chapter endeavours to demonstrate that such
alternativeness is not created only by the mere presence of technology and computer
programing in the process of translation but also by the changes these elements triggered
in the processes and the agents surrounding translation.
The first section discusses the place and nature of translation in e-lit. We argue
that the alternativeness of translation in e-lit is threefold. First, e-lit considers the
LITERARY TRANSLATION IN E-LIT AND DH 145

two announced axes (media-located literature and artificial intelligence) absolutely

simultaneously and in close relationship with a so-called original. Besides paying
attention to language matters (or to a text and/or a narrative), e-lit authors also closely
consider the process of creating such literature. The translation of e-lit cannot ignore
the role of code, computer, network and platform, thus, the importance of the digital
context and its position in the interplay between the human and computer forms of
cognition. Second, e-lit is a creative and collective practice that results in different
functions for the translators of multimedial and computational works. Their roles can
range from visible author-translators to ‘ambassador[s] of the work, often explaining
its mechanism and the translation process’ (Marecki and Montfort 2017), as well as
agents and editors involved in the work’s promotion, dissemination and preservation.
Third, one may easily distinguish different roles for e-lit translation from what may
be catalogued as translation of page literature. In e-lit, translation has a profound
preservation and dissemination role in the contemporary mediascape. The issue of
translation is intimately related to the expansion of a niche field with a manifestly
biased methodology that favours language divides (Rettberg and Baldwin 2014), since
English is the language of code, and the practice originated in the United States. The
constant interplay between national and global e-lit scenes begs for translation in order
to maintain literary diversity (Rettberg and Baldwin 2014: 68), to preserve e-lit works
on various (multilingual) platforms (Rettberg and Baldwin 2014; Tabbi 2017) and to
promote the field at a national level, not only globally via English.
Furthermore, the interconnected readability of these works as a form of cultural
practice (Baetens and van Looy 2008) keeps translations close to the matrix, sometimes
even considering them just another ‘original’, while translation studies either makes a clear
distinction between original and translation or praises the translation as a completely new
creative textual artefact that is distanced from the original in time and space. Whenever
used, translation is, therefore, an integral part of electropoetics, an intralingual and
intersemiotic process at the same time, a third code – a subcode of the matrix and target
(Frawley 1984) – which is placed in equally complex tension with the text and the digital
medium for which it was created. E-lit translation is a creative rendering or adaptation
of a text written in a certain language into not only another language but also another
medium, thus, highly dependent on various processual constraints. If the medium of
literary translation in translation studies does not pose significant problems, and if it is
traditionally associated with print, multi- and intermediality definitely gain much more
prominence in audio-visual translation, but they do so at the expense of interlingual
translation. In digital literature, the meaning of the textual form is intimately derived
from various structural and operative forms, such as hyperlinks, kinetic elements and
programmable elements (Glazier 2002). This section provides a series of examples that
illustrate all these features and are exemplary for certain relevant applications, as well as
theoretical developments of the concept of translation per se in e-lit. John Cayley, for
instance, speaks about the ‘translation of process’ (2018a), and argues that technics have
always been an integral part of reading and writing and, therefore, translation involves
reading-as-(re-)engineering and inevitably involves a production of technics associated
with the target language that will accomplish the rendition of the processes involved in
the source one. In works such as translation by Cayley, processuality and ephemerality
are there at their best, as passages that ‘drown in one language’ soon ‘surface in another’
within an ‘iterative, procedural “movement” from one language to another’ (Cayley n.d.;
Cayley 2019).
146 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

The second section approaches the issue of literary translation in DH, a transdisciplinary
field that has only recently started to show sustained interest in multilingualism, and, thus,
in translation. For many years since the beginning of the 2000s, literary translation had had
a deeply instrumental purpose, its alternativeness being related to using translation as an
authorship attribution instrument in the work of stylometry scholars, such as Jan Rybicky
(Rybicki and Heydel 2013; Rybicki 2005, 2009, 2012; etc.) and John Burrows (2002).
Except for them, and several of Rybicki’s Polish colleagues working in computational
linguistics, translation was seen either as unnecessary or as lacking proper multilingual
investigation tools and, therefore, was often set aside (Tanasescu 2021). Nevertheless,
the growing global DH community has recently brought the topic of multilingualism
to the fore, and numerous recent advances in (automated) natural language processing
(NLP) have increased the relevance of translation in the field. Our discussion concerns,
in particular, NLP and other algorithmic approaches to literary translation, mainly the
recent growing interest in literary machine translation (MT) and the related issues of post-
editing, human parity and the impact of such approaches on creativity and reception. The
second axis of our frame of reference – technology as artificial intelligence and machine
learning algorithms – will receive more of the focus here, particularly with regard (but
not limited) to NLP. As we will see, NLP-based and other computational approaches
to translation were initially (over a decade ago) significantly targeted at poetry. Since
then, the main focus has been on fiction and on discussing the effectiveness and quality
of MT in the genre, be it done with existing general-use or in-house affordances. And
yet, NLP and other machine learning methods have continued in poetry in a number of
projects (for now singular and avant-garde) that integrate experimental translation into
wider poetry computational analysis and data-science-informed modelling frameworks
that combine automated text close reading with corpus processing.
The conclusion recaps the main fields in which literary translation has a strong
alternative dimension for digital-medium and digital-space-based literature, briefly
revisits the two axes of the propounded frame of reference and their strong (inter)medial
tenure, and reiterates the beyond-translation facets of translation in the relevant areas:
translation of process and transcreation in electronic literature; and genre-geared NLP/
machine-learning-based or human-computer-interaction MT in DH. We conclude that
it is vital for translation studies to also consider literary translation as an intermedial
companion and a technological model of an original, not only a spatially and temporally
distanced emulation or recreation of an original piece of literature.

TRANSLATION IN ELECTRONIC LITERATURE

In the field of e-lit (and the subgenre of digital poetry), the alternative nature of translation
is intimately related to the alternativeness, or possibly utter otherness, of the field per se.
Yet, e-lit and digital poetry are a new kind of literature, quite similar to the ways in which
digital media are new media, in the sense that, while bringing about alternative modes
of production, practice and interaction, they maintain significant, if at times not readily
apparent, ties to their more traditional predecessors. Critics and practitioners have
excavated deep-running currents that connect digital poetry to traditional avant-gardes
and early modernism (Glazier 2002) and postmodernism (Funkhouser 2007, 2012),
or identified and collected medieval and early modern algorithmic and combinatory
poetry (Bootz and Funkhouser 2014). In doing so, such authors foreground the genre’s
definitory traits, such as processuality (Cayley 2018a, Torres and Guerreiro-Dias 2021),
LITERARY TRANSLATION IN E-LIT AND DH 147

interactivity (Funkhouser 2007, Rettberg 2015, 2019), and ephemerality (Funkhouser

2007, 2012; Paloff 2011).
Among the most significant contributions towards theoretically reframing translation
in e-lit – drawing on traditional precedents and yet aiming for radical renewal – is that of
Mencía et al. (2018), who made the concept of translation in e-lit more complex by arguing
that it is four-dimensional: translinguistic (the translation between [natural] languages),
transcoding (translation between machine-readable code and human readable text, and also
between codes of different programming languages and systems), transmedial (translation
between medial and semiotic modalities, e.g. text, sound, visuals), and transcreational
(translation as a creative compositional process and a shared creative practice – a term
appropriated from Haroldo de Campos). Their concept is argued to be applicable not
only in e-lit, but also beyond literature, (natural) language, and art in general, and
deployable, for instance, in shaping contemporary software culture. Mencía et al. (2018)
also speak about ‘[r]ecreating the experience of the interface’ in translating e-lit, as well
as about mediating software across technologies and cultures (Mencía et al. 2018: 2).1
In this seminal contribution, the authors advance an extended notion of translation as
modelling and also ‘remodeling of our activities and social interactions through enabling
software’ (Mencía et al. 2018) and reframe the question of e-lit translation as, ‘when is
the translation of code and interface also part of the form of literary translation?’.
Within such an expanded framework, e-lit translation gains considerable traction and
potentially remarkably wide relevance to digital cultures and society. E-lit translation is,
in fact, seen as a pattern for ‘understanding software culture’ (Baetens 2018: 12–3), as
the latter involves automating symbolic or signifying processes based on data models, and
the former can critically assess such models. Translation thus acquires an overarching
metaphorical scope within which algorithms that quantify user profiles and relationships
on various/multiple platforms or search engines, or process big/personal data for social
media management and profitability, are seen as translations (mainly of data into capital),
and, thus, best exposed or critiqued by practicing e-lit (translation). Jan Baetens interpreted
this as significant steps towards a theory of writing as digital translation and assessed it as
potentially ground-breaking, especially for coming up with a most challenging proposal,
that is, ‘to critically read the models that have automated natural language processing as
a general condition for digital communication’ (Baetens 2018: 12–3). Nick Montfort,
in contrast, expresses caution vis-à-vis Baetens’s enthusiasm and warns that the essay
of Mencía et al. was far from ‘mark[ing] “Electronic Literature Translation, Year One”’
(Montfort 2018); Montfort cites significant work done in the field by authors such as
John Cayley, J. R. Carpenter or himself, and events, such as the Translating E-Literature
conference at Université Paris 8 in 2012. Montfort also argues that other aspects, such as
the metrical, the material and the contextual, need to be considered in order to properly
‘explode and rework’ (Montfort 2018) the typology proposed by Mencía et al. Yet, what
critics seem to have not really addressed and, perhaps, Mencía et al. themselves have
not foregrounded explicitly enough, is that, besides the much needed (four-dimensional)
taxonomy, the contribution mainly made a point about translation being fundamentally
inherent to e-lit per se. Doing e-lit, generally, if not inevitably, involves translation in
its proposed full four-dimensional range. For, indeed, after briefly citing works by Olia
Lialina (1996) and Nick Montfort (2009), and how they were translated in several ways
(mainly for illustrating the concept of transcreational translation), the examples that
Mencía et al. discuss in detail are The Poetry Machine, by Woetmann et al.; ‘The Poem that
Crossed the Atlantic’ (2016), by Mencía herself; and ‘Machines of Disquiet’ (2015), by
148 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Luís Lucas Pereira, each of these works explored for the ways in which they internalized
the four dimensions of e-lit translation into their own compositional strategies.
It is true, though, that translation of and in electronic literature (e-lit) was imprinted
by the hybridity of the genre in and of itself – both radically innovative and grounded in
certain (unorthodox) traditions. A digital work, like Cayley’s translation, is an exemplary
illustration of the previously discussed features, as it projects and effaces at the same time
lacunary translations of texts from and into German, French or English. Processualism
and ephemerality are there at their best, as passages that ‘drown in one language’ soon
‘surface in another’ within an ‘iterative, procedural “movement” from one language to
another’ (Cayley n.d.). But Cayley’s translation is also illustrative of certain relevant
theoretical developments of the concept of translation per se in e-lit. Cayley speaks about
the ‘translation of process’ as he argues that technics have always been an integral part of
reading and writing and, therefore, translation involves reading-as-(re-)engineering, and
inevitably involves a production of technics associated with the target language that will
accomplish the rendition of the processes involved in the source one. As Katherine N.
Hayles notes in relation to Cayley’s translation, ‘the atomistic structures of computer and
human languages are the correlated microlevels that ensure translatability’ (2008: 149) – a
view that submits language to the intermediating agency of the computer and that is
essentially opposed to Walter Benjamin’s conception, widely cited in translation studies,
that the signifying power of things is related to the divine. His term ‘grammalepsy’, on
the other hand, refers to the ‘translation’ of otherwise meaningless gestures into language,
an experience typical of ‘language animals’ and useful for differentiating between natural
and machine languages, between code and text, and between (underlying generative)
program and (generated digital) literary work (or, in Cayley’s terms, ‘digital language
art’) (Cayley 2018b).
Translation of, and in, e-lit is generally problematized in relation to code/coding,
(digital) media and (factual/co-authorial) interactivity. Yet there are, based on that,
certain concepts, approaches and aspects feeding into theory and practice that are more
relevant to certain authors and practitioners than to others. The dimensions central to
John Cayley’s vision, for instance, are temporality and process, as fundamental to e-lit
and, consequently, also to translation in the field. Unlike traditional literary studies, but
very much like film studies, e-lit works/texts cannot but be really understood as ‘pieces
in time’, just like music and film, and actually, moreover, as works with no (possible)
definitive edition (Cayley 2018b: 10). Translation, in consequence, is always translation
of/as process, while translation in a more extrapolated sense is at the very core of e-lit
composition as ‘translation of time into space’ (Cayley 2018b: 107). Cayley’s work
represents a most vivid illustration of such poetics, with texts going back and forth
between versions in three languages (English, French and German) and complexly
evolving visually as parts and variable instantiations of those translations emerge on the
screen or are submerged in the background according to the reader’s interaction with it,
and to Cayley’s ‘ambient poetics’ (2018b: 10). The alternative dimension of such a work
does not necessarily reside in how the translation is carried out (as pre-existing versions
in the three languages are part of the code’s input)2 but in foregrounding its temporal
and evolutive quality, its multilingualism and its interactivity, and (as detailed below) its
inextricable embeddedness in the medium.
While, in such a work, Cayley’s long-standing theoretical and practice-based emphasis
on ‘text [algorithmic] generation, translation, and reconfiguration’ is clearly exemplified,
in works such as ‘wine flying: non-linear explorations of a classical Chinese quatrain’,
LITERARY TRANSLATION IN E-LIT AND DH 149

the text (in translation) is already there. Yet, as the title already alludes, the programmed
interface allows exploration (and for the author to make apparent and available to the
reader in an interactive environment) the poem’s ‘rhetorical structures’. The latter are
highlighted by scoring the ‘component words and phrases in alternate orders’ (p. 18).
A more experimental work – ‘Golden Lion’ – combines the translation of a poem (again
from Chinese, as Cayley has a background in Chinese literature) and the translation and
adaptation of a prose work by the Chinese Buddhist monk Fazang (cf. p. 26). Of the three
operations quoted above, reconfiguration is the most salient characteristic here, as the
essay is rearranged in the form of a mesostic,3 and displays highlighted letters that, pieced
together, make up lines of the Chinese poem in translation. ‘The effect is to produce a
commentary on the poem in the words of the essay, where the commentary has the poem
itself embedded within it’ (p. 26).
In discussing other artist-authors’ work, a relevant example given by Cayley is the
one of Francesca Capone and her ‘Primary Source’ (2015), an e-lit translation project
involving augmented reality and done with WordLens. The latter would be fed an image
containing text, and output a ‘translation’ (Cayley’s own quotes around the word –
p. 209 – speaking themselves of the alternativeness of the approach) in the user’s selected
language. Capone had come across an old poetry book in Russian with the title printed
against a grid background on the front cover, and used WordLens to translate that title.
The app did translate the title successfully, and was then ‘confused’ by the grid, which
it also started ‘translating’ into shifting English versions, thus, ‘produc[ing] an animated
sequence of textual events’ (Cayley 2018b: 209), also impacted by slight movements or
changes of focus and light. Translation, in this case, is indeed informed by augmented
reality, though it also involves the machine itself in deciphering a multiplicity of literal
levels in the ‘original’, ‘finding language-symbolic “differences” where we do not’ (Cayley
2018b: 209). It, thus, helps to uncover ‘poetry that underlies [the original’s] poetry’ and,
moreover, becomes instrumental in the artist’s own creative endeavour as an ‘animated
engagement with the book as poetry’ (Cayley 2018b: 209) Such translation falls, in
Cayley’s terms, under ‘reconfiguration’ and ‘transfiguration’, and it does so in a politically
charged way, as it also speaks to contemporary artists’ precarity and the impact of giant
corporation policies on arts, culture and the human condition more broadly. After being
acquired by Google and subsequently incorporated into Google Translate, WordLens lost
its visual and augmented reality component, which rendered ‘reconfigurationist’ Capone’s
‘Primary Source’ historical before even being publicly exhibited. While a project like
‘Primary Source’ discovered complexities in a surface rendered richer and variable by
augmented reality applications, ‘complex surfaces’ are, in and of themselves, a central
concept of Cayley’s poetics. Although the topic is beyond the scope of this chapter, suffice
it to say that, as already hinted above while commenting on the work titled ‘translation’,
such surfaces ‘for [digital] writing’ are both materially and conceptually complex, and
also ‘intrinsically temporal’, revealing time as conceivably the most salient and yet most
neglected feature of textuality (cf., for instance Cayley 2018b: 80). In a work of e-lit,
the complex surface is the medium of the interface text, that is, the text outputted by
the underlying code that ‘reconceals itself by generating a complex surface “over” itself’
(Cayley 2018b: 96).
Not only e-lit criticism but translation studies, as well, likely needs to take into
account, and account for, such complexities. If literature has traditionally indeed been, as
established in recent criticism (Kirschenbaum 2016), about the very surface or material
support of its own inscription, in e-lit, writing involves writing (as in coding) the surface
150 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

as well (Tanasescu and Tanasescu forthcoming). Yet, the complexity may be even more
intricate than that: the code obscuring itself under the surface it generates may have
its own various layers or ‘surfaces’, such as the code that generates, in Cayley’s terms,
the ‘interface text’, and also the code (or, rather, software and hardware together)
programming and supporting that very interface. All of these are essential parts of what a
work of e-lit is, and they have, indeed, entered themselves in the focus of e-lit translation
criticism and practice, termed as either the technical side, or the interface, or the medium
(or all of the above) of that particular work.
In ‘Translation, transmutation, transmediation, and transmission in TRANS.MISSION
[A.DIALOGUE]’, a publication dating back to 2014 and based on a presentation from
2012, J. R. Carpenter (Carpenter 2012 and Carpenter 2014) anticipates, as the title
indicates right away, some of the terms used by Mencía et al., although the scope,
angle and context are different. Presented initially as a talk at Translating E-Literature,
University Paris 8, in 2012, the critical article/poetics statement/philological excursus
discusses one of Carpenter’s own works put together as the translation (or as the author
states it, a ‘hack’) of another work, Nick Montfort’s ‘The Two’, in its turn, a translation
from Python into JavaScript of ‘story2.py’, also by Carpenter (2012). The work – TRANS.
MISSION [A.DIALOGUE] – is more than the translation of a (transcodal) translation;
it is, as Cayley would put it, a translation of process and, moreover, a translation of
a process … of translation. By means of an avalanche of subtle etymological-literary
speculations, Carpenter outlines the multifariousness of e-lit translation in relation to
code, natural language, ideology and media. Alternativeness ranges, therefore, from
translating the code for pragmatic medium-related reasons – transferring the e-lit work
to web browsers and, thus, translating it into ‘performance’, that is, ‘text … performed
by the browser’ (Carpenter 2014) – to literary translation into other languages that
involve code adjustment, so that grammatical and syntactical patterns still ensure the
ideological ‘trans-mission’ (particularly as relevant to genre),4 to translation as ‘hack’, as
transformation of ‘source code into a code medium of sorts’ (Carpenter 2014). Of course,
here ‘medium’ refers to (re)mediation (or, as Carpenter puts it, ‘transmediation’) and (re)
signification, but acquires a psychic connotation as well – ‘media haunted by generations
of past usage’ (Carpenter 2014) – thus, tossing in a traditional literary allusion,5 now
complicated by computation and digital intermediality.
Haunting has complex meaning and implications in Carpenter’s view on translation,
seen not as a unidirectional, univocally defined or definit(iv)e-output-based process.
Translation is, rather, a state of being involving a transitional ontology and migrant
mediality, going back and forth asymmetrically and asynchronously between languages,
space/times and interfaces. Transmediation, thus, becomes a logical alternative to the
rather teleological ‘remediation’ implying – to Carpenter’s ear – a somewhat inexorable
transition from print to digital (cf. Carpenter 2021: 6).6 In writing about ‘Entre Ville’,
the author makes a statement that may refer very well to her entire body of work: ‘Trans-
seems a more specific prefix than re- as it evokes the in-between parts of this process, and
-inter would also effectively encompass the multi-lingual multi-media ecology referred to
by this body of work’ (Carpenter 2021: 6). In the context, Carpenter does draw on the
arguably easily affordable metaphor of code running or interface display as translation – ‘[a]
text displayed on a computer screen is always already a text in translation’ (p. 3); ‘each
output is but one possible translation of its source code’ (Carpenter 2021: 66) – but does
so based on her own long-standing practice and compellingly articulate poetics. Her
page-based poems, for instance, are specifically typeset to reflect the source code of the
LITERARY TRANSLATION IN E-LIT AND DH 151

(possible) digital works they echo or approximate in print. Apparently minor details,
such as straight quotes (versus curly ones) or square brackets on the page, actually hark
back to the computational syntax informing the same poem in its (at times hypothetical)
digital versions and, thus, marking its transmedial elusiveness and fundamental in-
betweenness. Intermedial transition becomes, therefore, not the conversion of something
into something else but translation as/at the very core of the compositional process.
This allows for framing a print collection of poems, such as ‘An Ocean of Static’ (not
without irony), rather as a ‘transitional object’ than a ‘work in translation’ (Carpenter
2021: 8), an object illustrative of a poetics grounded in ‘[a] broad understanding of
translation – between media, languages, and presentation contexts – [that] has informed
the compositional process of this work’ (Carpenter 2021: 11).
Just as in an ongoing and expanding coding iteration, Carpenter’s translational
composition attracts further translation by other practitioners and practice-based
researchers. At the second Translating E-Literature conference at University of Paris 8
in 2020 (following the above mentioned 2012 conference, held at the same university),7
poet, critic and academic Anne Karhio presented a paper on translating Carpenter into
Finnish: ‘Finnishing it: Translating J. R. Carpenter’s TRANS.MISSION[A.DIALOGUE]’
(2020). Karhio tackles the topic the same way she approached translating the work,
as a code-language-culture continuum. While explicitly not arguing against Cayley’s
proverbial statement (and article title) that ‘the code is not the text (unless it is the text)’
(Cayley 2002), Karhio offers a strong caveat: in translating e-lit the former has to be
addressed as closely related to, if not an inherent part of, the latter (cf. Karhio 2020). And
the presentation in and of itself is a strong argument in that direction, as the translator
explains and exemplifies the adjustments she made on the JavaScript code in order to
make the output text make sense in Finnish, a language, she strongly argues, that is so
different from English on multiple levels. Karhio renders her account even more relevant
by adding a comparative dimension to it and discussing Ariane Savoie’s translation of the
same work into French. While the latter could easily render, for instance (if not augment),
the gender-relevant ‘[trans]mission’ of the original, the Finnish version had to resort to
certain ingenious solutions for that. Yet, the strongly alternative aspect of the translation
resides in the ways in which Karhio rendered the geographical, geopolitical and historical-
technological elements. While the French version, even if adapted to Francophone North
American and Quebecois culture, still shares with the English a transatlantic colonial
ethos, Karhio transferred – or rather computationally and linguistically translated – the
setting to Finland, the Baltic Sea and its Scandinavian-Russian historical and cultural
crossroads (more circumscribed to that part of Europe, but not without ties to the Atlantic
and North America either). In the process, she unearths a compelling alternative history
of the invention of radio, by a Russian (and not by Marconi), with some of the first
communications involving Finland and its nineteenth-century weather and navigation
conditions, which she had the code insert into the output text, rather than preserving the
truncated English radio messages (from roughly the same period) in the original.
‘Transcoding’ – the term borrowed explicitly by Karhio from Mencía et al. to refer to,
for instance, her own translation – has nowadays, therefore, become a necessary, if not
indispensable, component of arguably any e-lit translation. Philippe Bootz, a foundational
name in e-lit, gave a talk at the same conference precisely on transcoding as a possible
‘extension of translation’ (2020). ‘Extension’ in this case refers to a more comprehensive
approach that would account for the complexity and multilayeredness of a work of
e-lit, including its technological context, from a ‘meta-reading’ perspective englobing
152 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

the author-text (texte-auteur, the underlying code and algorithms and compositional
strategies) and visible-text (texte-à-voir, displayed output) (Bootz 2020). This globalizing
view has been Bootz’s trademark for decades and gravitates around his concept of the
‘dispositif’ (cf. for instance Bootz 2004 for perhaps the most pertinent presentation of the
model in English). The dispositif of the work of e-lit ‘encompasses all the technological
artifacts that participate in the transformation and all the human actors in contact, in
one way or another, with the main communication axis’ (2020), and although it has
usually been translated as ‘device’, it obviously also involves more complex meanings and
multiple connotations. Most importantly, perhaps, as stated in the above quote, it refers
to an ensemble of technologies, humans, interfaces and media, just as the French word
can also refer to (military) positions, and thus to complexes of personnel, equipment,
structures (hierarchical and/or architectural) and ([re]arranged) topography.
Such a complex model allows for a more refined and convoluted vision on e-lit
and, consequently, on translation. A notable distinction is the one between program
and ‘technological context’, particularly when going beyond the textual paradigm (and
specifically the cybertextual one). Having done pioneering work in animation and animated
poetry, Bootz, as early as the 1980s, stumbled on an intriguing phenomenon, namely that
the same program would produce different animations in different technological settings.
This feature, not apparent in text generators, led him to the conclusion that ‘the real digital
dispositif has a fundamental property that cybertext does not deal with: lability’ (Bootz
2020). That ‘technological fact’ emerged from the dependence of a program’s output on
the specific technology and was, since impacting meaning as well, also accompanied by
‘semiotic lability’ (Bootz 2020).
Lability, argues Bootz, is ‘neither noise nor deterioration’ but ‘transformation’ (Bootz
2020) and the main challenge it poses in translation is which state of the output or texte-à-
voir to pick. The solution advanced by Bootz, audacious and yet consistent with his overall
poetics, is to replace the traditional translation paradigm – original, [human] translator,
translation – with one ready to deal with, and account for, the complexity of the e-lit
dispositif, and therefore a translational dispositif in its own right: the ‘reading machine’
(Bootz 2020). A reading machine is both a ‘secondary discourse’ and a digital or video
production that ‘reconstructs’ the multiple (some of which non-apparent) dimensions of
the e-lit work as unearthed by a meta-reading of it. Transcreation is once again present
and explicitly invoked by the poet-critic, as the translation (informed by transcoding)
coming out of a reading machine is not a version of the original but a work in its own
right, similar, for instance, to book-to-movie adaptations. Such ‘procedural model’ will
have the reading machine extract from the original certain (possibly overlapping) lexias
(Roland Barthes’s term referring to ‘blocks of signification’ and ‘units of reading’ (1970:
13), which Bootz sees as involving ‘braids’ (tresses) from the texte-auteur and ‘snatches’
(bribes) of the texte-à-voir (2020). And, as there is no obligatory functional tie-in between
the braids and snatches featured in a certain meta-reading, Bootz’s model marks another
departure from the traditional paradigm when he, consequently, states that there is no
need for all those components and ‘sign spaces’ to be brought together into one single
object (Barthes 1970). We read Bootz’s reading machines, again, as dispositifs, since,
although machinic, they imply the involvement of humans and, moreover, they help to
instantiate a certain meta-reading done by certain human reader(s). There is a human-
computer imbrication informing Bootz’s view that, quite remarkably, posits translation as
a three-fold operation involving algorithmic transcoding, culturally or subjectively located
meta-reading, and technological indeterminacy, unpredictability or even erraticism
(‘lability’ in the author’s terms).
LITERARY TRANSLATION IN E-LIT AND DH 153

Reframed slightly differently and focusing more on reconstituting (or re-translating)

pioneering multimedial translational work, a similar conjunction of the logical and the
unpredictable occasions is the case of a practitioner-theorist like Erika Fülöp tapping
back into Alfred Jarry’s pataphysics – a parodical philosophy of science – and coming
up with a notion of ‘patatranslation’ (Fülöp 2020). Fülöp researches and translates the
work done by Tibor Papp – cofounder, together with Bootz and others, of the group
L.A.I.R.E. (Lecture, Art, Innovation, Recherche, Écriture) and of the review Lire in the
late 1980s – in automatic poetry generation in Hungarian (in its turn informed by classic,
Greek and Latin, translations and meters). Papp’s code is not available anymore – in spite
of his insistence that the software and the [outputted] text inseparably constitute the
work – and though the project under discussion was released on floppy disk in the 1990s
(and, hence, remediation challenges are inevitable). Based on Papp’s notes and combining
pataphysics with Mencía et al.’s concepts related to e-lit translation, Fülöp works towards
a patatranslation of the original as an ‘imaginary solution’, relying mainly on particulars
and serendipity and involving paratranslation.
What Papp did in France, and a host of others working in e-lit have also done in
the English-speaking world,8 involved automatic poetry generation based on (implicit
or explicit) algorithmic analysis. In other words, formalizing what of, and how, literary
(particularly poetry) forms should be read by the machine is the driving element behind
generating e-lit,9 and that automatic reading has, more often than not, been done in ways
speaking quite consistently (and in certain cases in an avant-la-lettre timely fashion) to
the methodologies adopted in areas such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

TRANSLATION IN DIGITAL HUMANITIES

In the wider context of quantitative analysis in DLS, Burrows (2002), a pioneer of
computer-based literary criticism, used Delta analysis to assess the style of a number of
Juvenal’s Restoration-age translations (after earlier collaborative work on the English
translation of Beckett’s Trilogy) with two objectives: authorship attribution and finding
out which of the translations are closer to the translator’s style as a poet. While the first
task did not work out as expected, the second provided remarkably accurate output and
prompted DLS author David L. Hoover to conclude that ‘[t]hese impressive results on a
very difficult problem show that Delta is capable of capturing subtle authorial markers
that persist even when submerged beneath the style of a translation’ (Hoover 2008).
Further significant applications in the field came from Jan Rybicki, who authored a
study (2005) on character idiolects in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s Trilogy and its two English
translations, while also deploring the scarcity of computational stylometric and author-
attribution contributions to the field of translation studies. These authors’ work, thus,
sees literary translation’s role as deeply utilitarian, as instrumental text in analysing the
‘voice’ of the original and of the translator.
Such analyses are, in fact, routinely and fundamentally done in NLP and machine
learning more generally, two fields that gained spectacular prominence in the early
2000s and which have attracted, over the past fifteen years, literary applications as well.
There are two main alternative translational dimensions to these approaches, the first
of which is represented by the use of MT proper, the very employment of the machine
as translator or as co-translator of/translating tool for human literary translators. The
prevailing argument of practitioners and critics working on this front refers to the quality
of the resulting translation and the validity of the approach. The second alternative
dimension pertains to deploying MT and other NLP, machine learning – or generally
154 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

computational – methods, algorithms or tools for experimental translation, experimental

writing or collection assemblage (involving translation), and transcreation.
Literary MT has focused, so far, mainly on fiction and poetry, being informed by
significantly gender-dependent approaches and result evaluations, with fiction (and other
prose) translations assessed mainly by human or human-machine parity and/or from a
post-editing angle, while the quality of poetry translations has been typically measured
against various formal constraints, ranging from meter to rhyme to stanzaic patterns.
Meanwhile, in spite of an early vigorous and optimistic focus and work on poetry
computational translation, the interest in the genre from this perspective has decreased
significantly, and analysing the possible reasons for that evolution might shed unexpected
light on the asymmetrical trend in fiction, and the genre’s arguably stronger pertinence to
the subject of MT more widely.
The 2010 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (MIT,
Massachusetts) marked a sudden spurt of interest in poetry MT. Two papers were
presented on the topic, and both introduced complex in-house algorithm and tools, and
had potentially significant results. Genzel et al. (2010) presented a French-to-English
computational translation method, outputting verse in meter and rhyme by using state
space algorithms. The algorithms were not so much devised to preserve the original meter
(if any) but to find the least expensive method (in terms of time – and consequently
resources – needed to run an algorithm) to output translations with (any) consistent
rhythmical, metrical and rhyming pattern. This approach has the advantage of making
possible the translation of any ‘arbitrary text into blank verse, picking whatever meter
fits best’ (Genzel et al. 2010: 161), but has the inevitable downside of performing very
poorly when expected to render a consistent given form (as featured by an original formal
poem). As a result, when using the algorithm to translate a French translation of Oscar
Wilde’s ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ (by Jean Guiloineau) back into English while using the
original as reference, ‘[o]ut of 109 stanzas, we found 12 translations that satisfy the genre
constraint’, whereas, ‘[i]f we allow any poetic form, 108 out of 109 stanzas match some
form’ (Genzel et al. 2010: 163, our emphasis).
Greene et al. (2010) focused on ‘Automatic Analysis of Rhythmic Poetry with
Applications to Generation and Translation’, and came up with different methods and, in
certain respects, relevant contrast to the other paper on poetry. While stating that CMU
Dict, the established computationally tractable resource for identifying the pronunciation
of words in English, including stress position, is not always reliable in uniquely assigning
stress patterns to words, they turned the issue on its head and undertook to learn the
probability of stress position in words based on the given meter of a line within a poem.
The quantitative assessment of the output shows impressive results on token (individual
occurrence of a certain word) analysis – 82.3 per cent for Shakespeare, 94.2 per cent for
an online sonnet database – but when it comes to line analysis, the accuracy of scanning
Shakespeare’s sonnets is just slightly over 50 per cent (55.7%), while it is good again for
the poems in the sonnets.org archive (81.4%) (Greene et al. 2010: 527). Such results show
that it is unlikely that the method will always accurately analyse idiosyncratic approaches
to classic meter such as that of Shakespeare, who inveterately puts considerable pressure
on the standard metrical grid.10 Yet, the authors ingeniously reverse the model to use it
for poetry generation and translation, feeding input to an algorithm that selects what fits
certain metrical – as well as, when required, rhyme – patterns. The input is provided by
a huge collection of statements for the generation application, and the statistical phrase-
based machine translation system Moses (Greene et al. 2010: 529) for the translation.
LITERARY TRANSLATION IN E-LIT AND DH 155

Moses generates a target-language lattice with paths scored by probabilities, which are
then filtered through ‘a strict, single-path, deterministic iambic pentameter acceptor’
(Greene et al. 2010: 529). The model has access to previous translations of the work at
hand, which it can sample and mix and match according with its own parameters, and that
is part of the reason why, for instance, the introductory tercets of the two translations of
Dante’s ‘Comedy’ they presented sound convincing in English (Greene et al. 2010: 530).
In their very useful literature review, Toral and Way (2015) list only one more
contribution besides the ones above, to poetry MT (that actually discusses both prose
and poetry). Jones and Irvine (2013), unlike the above-referenced researchers, do not
so much create a computational model and then evaluate its performance in prevailingly
quantitative computer-science-based terms, but, concurring with a more general literary
MT trend that was emerging back then and continues to this day (see below), use MT and
professional human translation for quantitative comparisons and reflections on the validity
and prospects of the former within a human-computer interaction and translation studies
framework instead. For French-to-English translation, Jones and Irvine put together their
own machine translator, by assembling a number of state-of-the-art resources, including
the Hansard data (over 8 million parallel lines of text taken from the proceedings of the
Canadian parliament) and the already mentioned Moses system. The comparison of the
translations thus obtained of an excerpt from Camus’s L’Etranger and a poem by Yves
Bonnefoy, on the one hand, and published professional literary translations (alongside
Google Translate renditions) of the same texts, on the other, occasions a number of
translation-studies-relevant conclusions. Although the authors agree with Michael Cronin
that MT may render the ‘labour of translation’ invisible (cited in Jones and Irvine 2013:
100), they adapt Lawrence Venuti’s notion of translator’s visibility (1995) for MT as
well. Although, in Venuti’s terms, disfluency and/or foreignization can ethically make
the [human] translator visible, the former can make the machine visible as well (as
encountering statistical and linguistic difficulties resulting in disfluency), while the latter
does not yet make sense for MT: machines cannot foreignize and MT remains, therefore,
for now, ethnocentric (Jones and Irvine 2013: 100).
Antonio Toral and Andy Way – particularly, Toral himself – are remarkably representative
of the above-mentioned trend of assessing the emergent role of MT in translation studies,
specifically in a human-computer-interaction context. Toral and Way (2015) provide an
update on the state of affairs regarding translation into English of Camus’s L’Étranger,
and conclude that MT results have increased significantly in just two years. They bring to
the table two other comparative long-standing approaches: translation between closely
related languages, and human parity.11 The former involves adding Italian as target
language for Camus’s novel and comparing the results to the English translation, and the
latter evaluates the quality of output by comparing it to human professional translation
(and also having native speakers compare the machine and human translations). As this
research was informed by previous experiments (Toral and Way 2014) with in-house
novel MT run on another closely related couple of languages, Spanish and Catalan, also
with promising performance (revisited for evaluation with automatic metrics in Toral and
Way 2015), the authors assuredly herald that the ‘[o]pportunity is ripe for the use of MT’
in literary translation (Toral and Way 2015: 247).
Although, in these earlier publications, Toral and Way were more inclined to envisage
interactive MT rather than post-editing MT for the future of literary translation, more
recent contributions focus on the qualitative and quantitative specifics of post-editing
efforts (Toral et al. 2018) and the impact of post-editing on creativity and the reading
156 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

experience (Guerberof-Arenas and Toral 2020). Relevantly enough, but perhaps not
surprisingly so, after running a survey involving eighty-eight readers as part of the latter
study, the conclusions were that human literary translation is still highest in creativity and
narrative engagement, while post-edited MT ranked ‘marginally higher in enjoyment’
(Guerberof-Arenas and Toral 2020: 1, 20, 24) and statistically quite close to human
translation in all other surveyed aspects, such as narrative engagement and translation
reception. MT ranked generally lower, which occasioned an argument in favour of
creativity and, implicitly, human-computer interaction-based literary translation. In
such contributions, the alternativeness of MT has gone full circle, serving now best
for foregrounding the importance and specificity of the human element within a wider
human-computer-interaction framework, and specifically literary post-edited MT or, at
times, even by contrast to MT. The panel ‘Translation Technologies for Creative-Text
Translation’, held at the 9th Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies in
Stellenbosch (South Africa), featured a remarkable presentation in that respect – on the
translator’s voice in MT, later on developed by the authors into a journal article (Kenny
and Winters 2020). English-to-German literary translator Hans-Christian Oeser was
involved in an experiment post-editing the MT of a novel he had previously translated
himself, and making notes in the process. The authors assess that the translator’s voice
comes across as diminished even in the post-edited MTs, compared to the initial published
translation under scrutiny (an excerpt from Oeser and Orth-Guttmann’s German edition
of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned). It nevertheless peremptorily remerges
in the notes on the experiment – an opportunity for the authors to argue in favour of
designing studies and experiments in MT with a focus on human translators and their
voice and to critically address long-standing translation studies conundrums, such as the
already mentioned translator’s visibility (Kenny and Winters 2020).
One may naturally wonder, why this shift in focus, from poetry a decade ago to fiction
of the past few years and, simultaneously, from in-house NLP modelling to MT pipelines?
As mentioned above, the ambitious and, at times, enthusiastic early contributions to
computational poetry translation had to deal, in addition to the factual interlingual
rendition, with genre-related issues and they did so in a more or less subtle and/or
effective fashion. For fiction, by comparison, since the genre-relevant formal aspects are
not always that complex and unavoidable, the practitioners could more easily focus on
the actual linguistic aspect (and that is why significant early work was done in literary
translation between closely related languages) and on post-editing (which dramatically
evolved into critically posing questions related to human-computer interaction and the
place/voice/visibility of the human in MT). In poetry, taking further steps could only be
done solidly after or while fully addressing the issue of genre-relevant and formal feature
machine learning modelling.
It is, therefore, not for no reason that the very few present-day projects in computational
poetry translation are based on more comprehensive – at times ‘holistic’ (cf. Tanasescu
and Tanasescu forthcoming and, also, Tanasescu et al. 2020) – underlying approaches
in poetry computational analysis. In such DH-informed initiatives, literary translation
involves the use of NLP and other computational methods – not so much for designing
or adjusting MT affordances (like the above-mentioned examples) but for engineering
specific literary work/corpus-attuned models and strategies. These approaches – given
their poetry corpus focus – usually also combine, hybridize or (re)process literary works
and/or their human translations with computational procedures targeting their actual
linguistic level, as well as other extralinguistic12 features that result from tackling them as
data, as data science objects.
LITERARY TRANSLATION IN E-LIT AND DH 157

In Margento’s bilingual anthology (in English and Romanian translation) ‘US’ Poets
Foreign Poets (2018), for example, the model deployed was the network graph,13 and
the translational and editing strategies were informed by graph theory concepts and
applications. The translation was, consequently, carried out on several levels. First, the
translation of an initial US14 page-based and digital poetry corpus into network graphs;
second, translation within and across the above-mentioned subgenres (traditional/‘page
poetry’ and digital); third, the translation of the algorithms that had generated the
‘originals’ into algorithms for composing, generating or assembling the ‘translations’; and,
finally, translation as automated expansion of the networked corpus, so that it gradually
includes more and more poems sharing certain remarkable features. The graph expansion
marked the transition from ‘US’ to ‘us’, poets and translators beyond any borders or
boundaries, thus channelling into the anthology’s last section, poems ranging from
ancient Babylonian (in English translation) to multilingual-Romanian (by Șand, Foarță),
to more e-lit. The critical reception included DH author Johanna Drucker’s reflections on
computation and/as composition (Sondheim et al. 2019) and reactions from e-lit critics
and practitioners, such as Christopher Funkhouser (Margento 2019) and John Cayley
(Sondheim et al. 2019). The former commented on the ‘[a]lgorithmic, linguistic, and
graphical expansion’ that ‘both transcreate[s] and more literally translate[s] the contents
of a collection of writing’ (Margento 2019), while the latter highlights the translation
as process performed within a book, and ‘helping to remove a few of the misdirected,
critically, and theoretically immaterial distinctions and barriers that more conventional
anthologies maintain’ (Sondheim et al. 2019).
In another very recent project (Murat et al. 2021), funded by Arts Council England
and commemorating the 2000th anniversary of Ovid’s passing as an exile among the
tribes (and local kings) of Getae on the Black Sea coast of Dacia (present-day Romania),
human-computer interaction-informed translation combines and converges with human
translation in a number of respects. An original English poem sampling, commenting on
and biographically interacting with Christopher Marlowe and John Dryden’s translations
of Ovid, which, in its turn, only sampled in the collection, is accompanied by its entire
literary human translation into Romanian, and also by two computational translations
(into English and Romanian). The latter were developed by mixing each section of the
original with poems, rock lyrics, literary translations, and academic articles or essays
from other authors (the last section, for instance, being submerged in a critical mass of
women’s writing) and then feeding the resulting texts to a topic modelling algorithm.
The translation involved progressively picking words, phrases, lines of verse and, finally,
stanzas probabilistically neighbouring the ones in the original within the topic modelling
output and arranging them graphically as conglomerates of countless possible translations
in both languages.

CONCLUSION
The alternativeness of literary translation in e-lit and DH lies in the way it relates to
literature, technology and media, as well as in the role it plays within these fields. Unlike
in translation studies, where it is traditionally opposed to literal translation, associated
with creative texts and seen in a subordinate relation to an original, regardless of the
degree of creativeness and originality involved, literary translation in the wider context
of digitality is deeply transforming and renewing – a condition for the process of writing.
Translation in and of e-lit is intimately related to the process of creation itself: first, as
a necessary limitation for creative authors, one that offers their idea ‘a home ground’
158 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

(Matthews 1997) – because one is limited by what language can say, and there is only
so much that a language can say; and second, as a process that limits what one wants
to say, but does so creatively, since the result may not have been anticipated, given the
game-like rules of translation: ‘we find ourselves doing and saying things we would never
have imagined otherwise, things that often turn out to be exactly what we need to reach
our goal’ (Matthews 1997). In writing e-lit, translation is ‘mechanism, media, technique,
and transmission’ (Mitchell and Raley 2018), thus, far from the ‘fakery, treason, and
inauthenticity’ (Mitchell and Raley 2018) that are often referenced in relation to literary
translation. The translation of unstable digital literary texts (an instability of form and
content, text interacting with other semiotic systems) takes into account the complexity
of the medium and of the process as shaped by the medium and is, therefore, spatially
and temporally connected to its matrix. In DH, on the other hand, the position of
literary translation varies widely, from a purely instrumental and utilitarian role, to
testing the technological challenges of MT, to an unparalleled potential for experimental
translation, experimental writing and transcreation presented by various computational
algorithms and tools. The latter direction positions translations in relation to the two
axes announced at the beginning of our chapter – literature and technology – and favours
none in particular.
However alternative and promisingly creative, the evolution of literary translation
in e-lit and DH depends to a very large extent on the development of multilingual
computational algorithms. If globalization entailed the primacy of English as a lingua
franca in the global circulation of goods, more recently the growing multilingualism of
the internet and the expanding interest in the decolonization of e-lit and of DH have
called for sustained multilingual work, both in creative writing and in research. The
future of literary translation in digital environments and in digital scholarship will, thus,
be reshaped by such efforts in the following years. Furthermore, if poetry has been among
the preferred genres in e-lit, novels have been the one of choice in DLS. Further focus on
formerly underexploited literary genres and forms is, thus, bound to be very fruitful for
translation in general, and for literary translation in particular.
No matter how many the pitfalls of technology in relation to handling literature via
translation, we hope we showed that they are outnumbered by an immense creative
potential, which makes translation not a subaltern of an original but a companion and a
deeply humanistic model that is capable of influencing the course of technology. On the
one hand, translation as an intermedial and processual companion further problematizes
long-standing issues in translation studies related to translation as a second-rate text, to
translators as secondary agents and to the agency of the digital medium in the Latourian
sense (1994), and beyond. Just as we talk today about digitized (remediated) versus born-
digital texts, the examples offered in this chapter raise the issue of translation-suitable
originals, thus rendering the original versus translation binarism even more problematic.
On the other hand, literary texts, as the last frontier of MT or machine learning, have
already proven their usefulness in relation to technological modelling: certain MT tools
have been specially designed for the purpose of translating a specific literary form between
closely related languages; concepts imported from graph theory or other mathematical or
computer science subjects have been developed from scratch as technological models and
are, meanwhile, further deployable in other (non-literary) applications. We suggest that
the game-changing role of such translations should not go unnoticed.
The alternativeness of literary translation in e-lit and DLS is, for now, enabled by the
way in which translation studies as a discipline thinks about translation as prevalently
print-based. Translation is bound to keep testing the digital-human vulnerabilities
LITERARY TRANSLATION IN E-LIT AND DH 159

of our existence for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, translation studies should
not see digitality as only remotely connected, at best, but as expanding the field’s
interdisciplinarity and balancing out the invisibility and imitation traditionally seen as
definitory of translators and translated texts.

NOTES
1 The authors presented the concept as extending from the levels of language to the levels
of code and media while being rooted in forerunners such as Roman Jakobson, Walter
Benjamin and Oulipo.
2 Further information related to the input text, code and outputs can be accessed at http://
www.shadoof.net/in/translation.html.
3 A poetic form notably established by John Cage and Jackson Mac Low, and then further
practiced in e-lit by authors such as mIEKAL aND (1998).
4 Carpenter also references existing translations of both ‘story2.py’ and ‘The Two’ into
French, Spanish and Russian (Carpenter 2012).
5 The concept of haunting/(being) haunted (in/by) translation has a long literary history;
in contemporary poetry, for instance, see Jerome Rothenberg’s notion and practice of
‘writing through’ (Rothenberg 2004), and his definition of translation as writing with other
[dead] people’s words. Also, on the relationship between new media and the dead, see
Lagerkvist (2019).
6 We had the opportunity, courtesy of the author, to read this article before it was published
in Hybrid, and therefore we cite the page numbers in the manuscript, from 1 to 17.
7 Carpenter herself gave a talk at Translating E-Literature 2020 on her digital ‘hydro-
graphic novel’, The Pleasure of the Coast, which she framed in the meanwhile established
terms of Mencía et al. (2018), as an instance of ‘transcreation as a compositional process’
(Carpenter 2020).
8 Most notably Charles O. Hartman (1996 and 2005) and Jim Carpenter (2004).
9 At times masquerading as mainstream literature contributed to ‘respectable’ literary
journals, and consequently stirring significant dustups when ‘unmasked’. See, for instance,
most recently, Rettberg (2019) and Klobucar (2021), who mention Stephen McLaughlin’s
and Jim Carpenter’s controversial poetic experiment of 2008, in which they used the
fictional poet Erica T. Carter, actually a ‘writing machine’, to generate the first issue of a
fictional poetry e-journal (Issue 1: Fall 2008) and to collect nearly 4,000 original works by
a number of established poets.
10 Cf., for instance, Mary Kinzie (1999). The authors’ own qualitative assessment is itself
not always the best informed in terms of English prosody; that the Shakespearean line,
‘The perfect ceremony of love’s rite’, for instance, is scanned by the algorithm as bearing a
stress on ‘love’s’ and another one on ‘rite’ (mistakenly read by the machine as having two
syllables) is blamed by the authors on the confusion between loves and love’s, and not on
the incapacity of the algorithm to scan two unstressed syllables followed by two stressed
ones as the possible irregular equivalent of two iambic feet (cf. Baker 1996).
11 Toral and his collaborators have, meanwhile, critically reassessed claims of human parity
and superhuman translation, refuting most of them, for instance, for the translation
directions of the WMT2019 shared task (Läubli et al. 2020).
160 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

12 By extra-linguistic we mean outputted by the computational processing of their language

and converted into variables and values fed to a certain mathematical model.
13 The anthology actually came out of the Graph Poem project, developed at the time by the
editor at the University of Ottawa and meanwhile also at UC Louvain.
14 Although announced as American, the initial corpus included poets from outside the United
States too, such as the Canadian David Jhave Johnston and the UK-based Spaniard Maria
Mencía.

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 CHAPTER NINE

Translating Friendship
Alternatively through
Disciplines, Epochs
and Cultures
CLAUS EMMECHE

Traditional notions of translation (TN or ‘narrow translation’) have had a primary focus on
text translation and how meaning can be preserved. This chapter employs an alternative
semiotic understanding of translation (TS or ‘semiotic translation’), as suggested by Kobus
Marais, to demonstrate how it can be used to study inter-epoch changes in norm-directed
practices and their conceptualizations, cross-cultural developments and interdisciplinary
translations of concepts used to describe them. Friendship practices and their theoretical
descriptions are used as a case to show the need for alternative understandings of
translation processes. TS occurs not only when texts are taken as signs of complex
phenomena but also when a mode of life and the sociolinguistic practice of one generation
or culture is interpreted and changed by its inheritors. To develop TS as a general and
theoretically more satisfying model, we investigate some of the processes involved in the
inter-epoch conceptualizations and cross-cultural developments of friendship. Claiming
that different friendship studies all contribute to knowledge of some aspects of ‘the
same’ phenomenon demands the possibility of translations of ‘friendship’ as a word,
concept, practice, interpersonal relationship, social bond, ideal, form of love, normative
constraint, power relation or any other terms that have been used to characterize its
phenomenology and dynamics. Analysing TS translations of friendship across epochs
(from Confucius and Aristotle through the following eras, up to modernity), cultures
(worldwide) and languages demonstrates how the perspective of TS helps us grasp ancient
texts, their translations and cross-cultural friendship performances better without forcing
upon the material our late-modern perspectives and norms. It is suggested that frames
(from artificial intelligence and philosophy of science) can be an analytic tool for studying
TS processes. Finally, some challenges to be resolved in further research are outlined.

Goods of commensurate worth and utility were thus simultaneously exchanged …

They fulfilled a psychological need, the need to translate every state or quality into a
symbol.
– Gabriel Herman1
166 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

PRELUDE
I’m happy to have friends I see and interact with. Some of them I’ve known for a long
time, and have followed their doings and lives over decades. A few of them are very close;
they’re persons I think I know well –– their idiosyncrasies, weaknesses, strengths – and
I know they, too, know my strengths and vulnerabilities, but are seldom judgemental
about my faults. I sense they respect and care for me, just as I respect and care for
them. Exchanging stories, frustrations and rumours, sharing experiences, discussing
viewpoints – in this river of interpretations I translate their actions and messages, sense
how they see things, and I’m prompted to reflect on what I like or dislike, and how
I would have reacted in this or that situation. Any interpretation is also a translation, and
not just because of etymology (the Latin interpretari means ‘explain, translate’). Whenever
I address a friend, I translate my question into their world, of which I know a part. I may
slant certain facts, give hints I know they know how to decode and, within these shared
exchanges, we slowly translate and retranslate each other’s experiences.
Where did this kind of friendship come from? How did I learn it? Could the ‘I’ in this
story have belonged to any culture, any time? Is ‘friendship’ just a reification of a very
fuzzy type of relationship that can never be put into a single formula, or is it possible to
trace some translations of this relational mode, not only in my own life but since the very
beginning – and yes, let’s talk about origins – say, when we, hardly yet humans, were
supposed to have descended from the trees to walk out on a dusty savanna, to begin a
social existence of a new kind, slowly building up more civic societies in different parts
of the world? Is there a general story of friendship to be told, translated and retranslated
many times? How can such translations of one form into another actually become
comprehended as a part of the whole story?

INTRODUCTION
The aim here is more to pose questions about different perspectives of translation than
to settle them as answers, and the cases used are meant to focus the discussion. From the
general point of view of semiotics, translation is a relational set of mediational processes of
transferring, interpreting, transforming and preserving (to various degrees and in various
modes) meaning through systems of signs; such processes of sign action and interpretation
are often referred to as semiosis (Peirce CP 5.4842). From this broad perspective, it is easy
to see why a more vernacular sense of translation (sometimes called ‘translation proper’,
but here called ‘narrow translation’, TN) only involves a meaning-preserving interlingual
transformation of a message (as a text in one language transformed into another text
with the same meaning in another language), which is ‘narrow’ and cannot stand alone:
Even ‘traditional’ interlingual text translation can only be understood in all its troubled
and intricate details as being part of semiotic processes that are embedded, enculturated
and embodied in and often across patterns of sociocultural space-time that add more
complexity to the dynamics of translational semiosis than implied by an everyday
understanding of TN. This broader semiotic perspective on translation (generalized
translation semiotically construed, as a technical term, ‘semiotic translation’, TS) opens
inquiries into alternative forms of translational semiosis that takes place in parallel with,
and often directly interacts with, processes of interlingual text translation.3
Thus, understanding TN demands detailed investigations of TS. For instance, when
novels are retranslated, as when a Danish publishing house, in 2019, issued a new
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 167

translation of Il Decamerone (completed by Boccaccio in 1353; first translated to Danish

in 1904), it is not only because the Danish language has changed but also because what
we vaguely call ‘Danish culture’ (ways of living, interacting, working, talking, thinking,
loving, caring) slowly alters as new generations of readers make their entrance. A new
generation’s inheritance of a culture from previous generations is an instance of TS or
interpretation and change of the interconnected web of linguistic and cultural practices.
Hence, updated versions of novels, movies and plays are not just a product of TN or
linguistic updates but of all the processes involved in TS. They are part of the social
mechanisms by which a new generation inherits and transforms a cultural landscape,
and lets itself be influenced by other cultures. When a digital publishing company that
supplies educational material introduces The Decameron to new readers, one of its stories
of love and friendship is presented like this: ‘The story of Alessandro and the Abbot is a
gender-identity bending version of friends with benefits. If you take a close look at the
language here, you might guess that the Abbot’s admiration is teetering on the threshold
of erotic appraisal. Stay tuned.’4 Mediation and interpretation go hand in hand in this
translation of a love relationship in a literary work from 1353 into a contemporary frame,
using a category for a purportedly ‘new’ form of friendship (one with sexual benefits5)
to catch the interests of contemporary readers, by offering a label known by this target
group to decode a fragment of meaning in a novel not to be dismissed as arcane (a
concern more important for the publisher, than academics’ concern about the labelling’s
historical presentism).
Such examples are far from unique and raise a general question we will pursue: Is it
possible to develop models of alternative translation of not only our language-mediated
descriptions of ‘something’ (here we use relationship practices of friendship as our case)
but also some of the ways in which that something is translated (in the broader semiotic
sense, TS) across cultures and epochs? Some phenomena denoted by words in a language
may be especially adequate for being subjected to such an analysis: Words for concepts
that are not only descriptive of actually existing phenomena (cf. Peirce’s ontological
category of secondness) but also normative as representing a norm or ideal for what the
concept denotes (thus instantiating thirdness) and, thus, for how such an entity, process or
idea ought to be realized within a given situation. The word ‘state’ denoting an organized
political community under a government with a set of institutions is not just a descriptive
term for a territory or nation, it is also a normative term implied by the idea that we can
have ‘strong’ states as well as ‘failed’ states (that do not live up to the ideal set by the
concept). Our attempts to compare and distinguish good and bad forms of governance
date back to, at least, the works in political philosophy by Plato and Aristotle. The word
‘friendship’ (as well as words for other relationship types) has the same character. The
norms implied by such words can change with the sociocultural evolution of societies. It is
disputed whether there is a common core of meaning behind ancient friendship forms and
modern friendship, or across friendship as conceived of in Western societies in contrast to
traditional Asian, African, Pacific or native American practices of friendship – and whether
and to what extent the terms for friendship(-like relationships) in various languages are
translatable across epochs and cultures without a significant loss of meaning. These
disputes align with different stances and positions within translation studies regarding
the translatability of various entities (like ideas, cultures, systems of belief, identities).
Neither strong universalist positions (claiming meanings to be universal units across
cultures and languages) nor strong relativist positions (like a culturalist meaning holism
maintaining a low or absent translatability of certain things) will be defended here, and
168 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

debates within the field have shown this dichotomy between universalism and relativism
to be too simplified. We will rather opt for an alternative and empirically open position,
which allows for something to be lost in translation, something to be kept and something
new to be created via translational processes. This suggests that a closer study based on
cases of the semiosis of TS (embedded in intercultural communication and inter-epoch
inheritance and interpretation) would give a more nuanced view, and allow for different
cases to be located at different places in the continuum between ultra-relativism and ultra-
universalism.6
We will first try to schematize the question of alternative translation within the human
sphere (we do not dwell on its biosemiotic dimensions) in its totality across epochs and
cultures, to create a map of transformations via TS that are relevant for friendship as
a word, a phenomenon, a practice and an idea. Then, we will give examples of ways
of filling out this scheme by exploring some of the research that has been done on the
history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology (etc.) of friendship, and, finally, we will
discuss the benefits and limitations of an expanded notion of translation for grasping
friendship through ‘big’ (historical) time and (cultural) space.

FRAMEWORK: SCHEMATIZING THE COMPLEXITY

OF ALTERNATIVE TRANSLATION
To help imagining broader alternative senses of translation as informed by semiotics
(especially in the tradition of Peirce, cf. Stjernfelt 2007; 2014; Marais 2019), we can
schematize the contrast between TN and TS by a few simple diagrams (Figures 9.1,
9.2 and 9.3).
Though it is a simplification to posit a single ‘traditional understanding of translation’
as being purely interlinguistic in the sense of TN (Figure 9.1), we will not go into detail
in outlining the historical complexity of different translation practices within different
traditions, but simply emphasize that the semiotic understanding of translation (TS)
represents an expanded alternative. From the perspective of translation studies, one
may conceive of TN and TS as end points of a continuum between a series of narrow
and broader concepts of translation. From a Peircean semiotic perspective, the problem
with TN is that this notion tends to abstract away the complex semiotic character of all
translational processes, as if texts could exist in isolation – or as inputs to a formal process

FIGURE 9.1 Schematic representation of TN, translation in the narrow sense. Here is a high
focus on the two languages in which the meaning of the translated text (t) is attempted to
be preserved by the translation, but little focus is on the differences and similarities in the
dynamics of cultural practices (symbolized by the rounded rectangles) in which the two texts
come to exist.
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 169

of machine translation. This simplistic understanding of translation (Figure 9.2a) can be

contrasted with a semiotic understanding (Figure 9.2b) that emphasizes the relational
and basic triadic nature of any sign – in particular texts as complex signs – that do not
develop as isolated representations, but are rather composite representamens that stand in
irreducible triadic relations with both the signified objects (like human practices or other
phenomena) and their interpretants understood as their actual or conceivable effects
(cf. Peirce 1931–1958). Figure 9.2b is a pedagogical simplification, for even though
the middle arrow stands for translation processes, the very process of interpreting any
single sign, thought, action or conduct involves translational processes (Marais 2019:
Chapter 4).
If the signified phenomenon is friendship, it is important to remember that, in the
Peircean conception of the sign, triadic sign relations can be instantiated by something
outside language, such as actions, perceptions, habits or feelings. Thus, in a translation
(p0 ····> p1) of friendship habits or norms from one context to another, the sign carrier
(or representamen) t0 does not have to be a text, but could be any other sign of such an
interpersonal relation.
As Marais (2019) indicates, exemplified below with the case of friendship studies, the
semiotic perspective opens to alternative fields of study, alternative times, spaces, cultures,

FIGURE 9.2 (a): TN as interlingual translation as if realized through a purely linguistic process
that aims to preserve the meaning (i0) of a text (t0) translated into another language (t1) so i0 = i1.
(b): TS as alternative or semiotic translation cohering with interpretation and extralingual changes,
involving not just representamens but also the phenomena represented and their interpretants.
Legend: ⅄: a Peircean triadic sign; ·····>: processes of translation; p: a praxis or real-world
phenomenon (e.g. a specific friendship practice) as the object of the sign; t: word, text, discourse
fragments or other information-carrying processes as the representamen of the sign; i: the
meaning effects (new signs, thoughts, actions, conducts, habits), or interpretants, of the sign.
170 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

FIGURE 9.3 Schematic representation of TS, alternative or semiotic translation. It includes

translation between cultures (both within and between linguistic communities) and between
epochs, of which only three are shown as examples. Legend: Rounded rectangles: cultures
(with partly overlapping subcultures, e.g. ‘high’ or ‘academic’, and ‘popular’); p: a practice
that may or may not be described by some text within a culture, e.g. texts about friendship,
including culture-specific norms of friendship; T: interlingual translation of a contemporary
text or practice from language-1 (within a ‘high’ culture) to language-2 (within an academic
culture); T’: interlingual translation of a historical (ancient) text from language-1 (within a
‘high’ culture) to language-2 (within an academic culture); M: translation as the intralingual
mediation of a contemporary textually described practice from a ‘high’ (or professionally
specialized) culture to a ‘popular’ or common culture; hT: intralingual translation (including
historical interpretation) of a text or practice from one epoch to another; hT’M: interlingual
cross-epochal translation of a historical (ancient) text or discourse from language-1 (within a
‘high’ culture) to language-2 (within a popular culture); a1, a2, b1, b2: sociocultural change as
generalized translation (including sociocultural change and lingual evolution).

practices, people and alternative conceptualizations, and directs translation studies to

culturally and historically sensitive approaches to a broader range of phenomena, which,
in fact, are being translated. Figure 9.3 is a simplified diagram (with all arrows being
instances of TS) to illustrate some of this complexity.
We will illustrate this broader semiotic notion of translation (of ideas, practices, norms,
habits and words for social phenomena) through friendship as conceived and practiced in
distinct epochs and cultures, such as the ancient world in the East and West, the medieval
era, early modern and fully modern times. Accounting for this in sufficient detail would
demand a book, so here we can only indicate fragments of this larger history.
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 171

It is worth remembering that the idea of alternative translation as cultural translation

is not completely new, and not restricted to translation studies.7 In the sphere of religion
and mythology, cultural translation is well known, as testified by biblical scholar and
historian Mark Smith’s characterization of the discourse of interpretatio graeca as a
comparative methodology using ancient Greek religious concepts and practices, especially
the deities and myths, to understand their equivalencies in Egypt or Roman culture: The
statement by Herodotus (c. 484–c. 425 BCE) that, as a general principle, ‘the names of
almost all the gods came to Greece from Egypt’ (Smith 2008: 252) can be seen as a
larger trend towards identifying deities cross-culturally (cf. also Assmann 1997). It is easy
to see the pantheon of Roman gods as a cultural translation of the Olympian gods of
Ancient Greece, but of course, this begs the question about precise and diverse origins and
cross-cultural influences. Although one can make long lists of equivalents of deities from
Greek, Roman and other cultures, based on usage among the ancients and supported by
modern scholarship, ‘equivalent’ should not be taken to mean ‘the same god’, because
even though the myths or cult practices of a particular Roman deity were influenced by
the Greek tradition, the deity may have had an independent origin and a cult practice
that were culturally distinctive.8 The same kind of complexity goes for cross-cultural and
cross-epochal translation of friendship texts and practices, as we shall see.
What is gained by treating the influence of certain friendship practices or norms at one
place or time upon another as translational processes, rather than simply as cultural, social
or historical change? The benefit is epistemic and can be easily explained more generally.
Alternative translation is a new theoretical perspective that sheds light on phenomena in
a way that allows us to deal epistemically with some things we would not be able to ‘see’
had this new beam of investigative light not been directed at them. Compare with notions
of performance in performance studies. Not everything is a performance in the ordinary
sense, but once a theoretical cluster of concepts about performance has emerged, with
these new epistemic tools we can investigate numerous social, cultural, aesthetic, moral,
political (etc.) activities (even friendship, as we shall see) as instances of performativity.
We grasp in new ways that language itself has deep performative dimensions, and we
can get new insights about how language, texts and actions are interrelated.9 However,
accessing the epistemic benefits (as well as drawbacks) of a new perspective demands
concrete assessments case by case, and this applies as well to TS in general and to TS as
applied to friendship studies.
Notice the similarity between TN and economism. Economism is not only the tendency
to reduce all human action to a notion of economic gains and benefits as the core of rational
decision-making (rather than taking ‘economy’ to be a much wider domain of human
life, continuous with ecology), it also gives economy a too narrow meaning. Similarly,
the problem with TN is not only that it reduces all translation to interlinguistic textual
practices but also that it leaves uninvestigated a whole range of translational phenomena
involved in human action. Instead, assuming with Marais (2019: 39) that a ‘semiotic
theory of translation makes it fully possible to conceptualize the translational aspect or
dimension of culture, of society and of living organisms’, a focus on friendship as one
such translational aspect in the life of cultures, societies and human beings (and maybe
even some animals) raises interesting questions about what exactly is being translated, and
about the limited though important role that texts may still play in the overall process.
If cultural translation involves changes in both material practices and their governing
ideas, as expressed in dialogues and propagated through texts, then the history of ideas
and practices in a region like Europe or China is intertwined with cultural translation.
172 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

The very notion of intellectual history, or ‘history of ideas’, invites its study through a
lens of translating through time and place.10 Before exploring the case studies, let us
briefly address some questions raised by a generalized semiotic approach to translating
friendship.
The first question is about the point in human history when friendship became
contingently related to texts. It seems fairly obvious that it was always related to
communication in its widest sense. Friendship among humans may have an evolutionary
prehistory, as testified by the patterns of friendship recently investigated for the great apes
and other species. Such friendships are forms of communicative interactions between
animals forming social ties within smaller groups of conspecifics.11 Friendship in human
societies is likely to have existed from the very beginning of our species, perhaps before
the invention of spoken language, and along with the evolution of parallel forms of
embodied biocommunication. When written language and societal institutions emerged
later on, friendship could be codified by symbolic exchanges of gifts or in texts describing
its normative practices.
A second issue is about the sense in which we can claim that human-specific friendship
patterns ‘translate’ across human societies. Friendship does seem to be a human universal
(there are none or extremely few human cultures with little or no signs of friendship12),
though the expressions of this universal are highly moulded by sociocultural processes,
some of which can have a translational nature. There are ongoing debates in linguistics,
anthropology, history and philosophy about the degree of cross-cultural universality (and
thus, translatability) of friendship. If friendship as a cluster of relational forms has been
with us from the very beginning of our species, a logical implication from an evolutionary
point of view is that translational processes (involving cultural transmission, as well as
transmission of the genetic makeup required to make us sociable) have been involved in
transferring these forms through generations and along routes of migrations.
We may ponder, third, if, and in what sense, patterns of friendship practice could
become translated from one culture or epoch to another. The examples we will see
below support the claim that cross-epochal and cross-cultural translations of friendship
form parts of wider processes of interactions between cultures and languages through
time and place. Historically such processes are interwoven with ‘civilizing’ processes
of socio-economic change in education, manners, public/private borders, transmission
of intangible cultural heritage, state building, and the globalization, hybridization and
pluralization of cultures.13
Fourth, aiming at a TS account of ‘translated friendship’ through sociocultural time
and space, we need to distinguish between three dimensions, all with TS aspects: (a) real
practices (talk and action) of particular friendships between actual agents; (b) a discourse
that influences practices of friendship in a specific (sub)culture, expressed, for instance,
in proverbs, poetry or such television sitcom streams as ‘Friends’ (broadcast by NBC and
depicting the fragility of romantic relationships and the resilient potentials of friendship);
(c) systematic and often edifying discourses, for example, in philosophy, about ideal or
‘best’ friendship. Though these three dimensions can, in an analytic sense, be treated
separately, a likely hypothesis is that, historically, they came into being through vast
processes of TS of (a) into (b) with the advent of language, and of (a) + (b) into (c)
with the advent of religious, political, ideological and educational discourses. The three
dimensions could also be conceptualized within general semiotics as three social semiotic
systems – praxis, normativity and theory – that are, to various degrees, intertranslatable.14
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 173

Lastly, a fifth concern is whether friendship practices themselves (within a culture

and at a given time) can be conceived of in terms of translation. A hint was given in the
prelude. One can argue that the self of a person is a translational result of being partly
scaffolded by that person’s friends, a social world of Other, including a good friend as
another self. The very notion of friendship is also accessible for semiotic analysis.15

TRANSLATIONAL FRIENDSHIP: CASE STUDIES

The case studies of translational semiosis (TS) of friendship will range within an epoch
across languages and cultures; across epochs within a cultural tradition; and, finally,
across both epochs and cultures. Though we move beyond an interlingual focus to
discuss alternative forms of translation, we will first comment on a problem that has been
discussed in relation to the TN of friendship across languages and epochs: The challenge
is not only a narrow focus in translation studies on TN (interlingual translation) but also a
tendency to conceive of interlingual translation too narrowly.

TN across epochs, languages and disciplines: From philia to friendship

Take as an example a debate about how to grasp ancient Greek texts on friendship if
we take their descriptions of conflicts between ‘friends’ to mean that same as we do by
this word today. Though we may speak of siblings or spouses who are also ‘friends’,
friendship today is typically considered a voluntary and affectionate bond between non-
kin. In Ancient Greece, ‘friendship’ or philia covered a wider set of relationships than
friendship, such as love between kin, and even solidarity between citizens (Konstan
1997). Classics scholar Elizabeth S. Belfiore did an insightful study, called Murder Among
Friends: Violation of Philia in Greek Tragedy, and concluded that ‘what evidence there
is supports the view that tragedy as a genre was concerned with terrible events among
philoi’ (Belfiore 2000: 119, philoi is plural of philos, friend). David Konstan, also a
classicist, criticized the book’s title. According to him, it should have been Murder Among
Kin, because, going through the evidence, he found no murder among friends (in the
modern sense of the word) in the Greek tragedies. The harms, violations and killings
were all among family members! Violence between friends (in our sense) was ‘virtually
nonexistent’ (Konstan 2001), and why so? We can only guess. In her book (2000: 19),
Belfiore takes issue with Konstan’s (1997) critique of the common practice of translating
of the word philia as kinship or friendship and the word philos as kin or friend, while
Konstan (2001: 271), in turn, thought that her ‘broadening the meaning of philos’ had
the unfortunate consequence, which goes unnoticed in Belfiore’s discussion, that the
absence of murder among non-kin friends is left unexplained.
What seems to be a smaller disagreement about how to TN-translate friendship from
ancient Greek to contemporary English is, in fact, related to a broader controversy
about the TS of friendship across epochs and how its practices are understood within the
different taxonomies of personal relationships (cf. also Cantarella 2009). Interestingly,
this debate relates to how different disciplines constitute their own specific perspectives of
a phenomenon, and how such disciplinary perspectives may become translated from one
field of research to another: Before the ‘anthropological turn in classical historiography’
(Konstan 1997: 3ff), there was little concern about taking classical Greek texts as
evidence of the ancients’ high valuation of deep friendship as we know it. But after the
classics had gone through such an anthropological turn (or translation16) in the 1970s
174 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

and 1980s, classicists began to see ancient people as relatively more ‘Other’ than modern
people, and ancient friendships were seen more as part of a wider system of instrumental
transactions with implicated obligations. Thus, the forms of reciprocity in friendship
were seen as more obligatory, and less as an affectionate relationship characterized by
intimacy as we know it, ungoverned by calculations of interests. Konstan himself was a
part of this turn, but, as he continued his classic studies, he found so many anomalies in
the implied assumptions that, in his 1997 book, he presented arguments that challenged
the anthropologized scheme of classic friendship. This controversy is not yet resolved and
has left many open questions.
One lesson is that, in science and scholarship, one does not study phenomena such as
friendship directly; researchers make a model of it that – depending upon a disciplinary
view or perspective – lifts some aspects of the phenomenon out of its real complexity to
constitute it as an epistemic object (an apple as an object of biochemistry is its metabolic
processes; an apple as an object of economy is processes of supply, demand, price changes;
etc.). In this way, research translates everyday complexity to (mono- or inter)disciplinary
simplicity, and if researchers want to apply knowledge gained in other disciplines, they
must beware of the need to reflect on processes of recontextualization and retranslation.

TS within epoch, across languages

The model of TS sketched in Figure 9.3 should (as a generalization of TN) also be able to
account for TN and problems related to ‘traditional’ interlingual translation of ‘friendship’
(for instance, as we saw above, by taking interdisciplinary interactions into account).
Within a specifically linguistic context, the TN translatability of ‘friendship’ has been
debated. Just as the universality of the friendship phenomenon comes in degrees,17 there
are problems (at least for some cultures) related to the actual interlingual translation of
not only texts on friendship from one language to another but also translation of the very
concept of friendship and friends in English to what should be something ‘corresponding’
in another culture. A collection of remarkable examples is provided by Polish-Australian
linguist Anna Wierzbicka (1997), who analysed English, Russian, Polish, German,
Japanese and Australian cultural scripts through what she called their ‘key words’ (e.g.
friendship, freedom, homeland, some swearwords). Her approach was inspired by
anthropologists using special but common words of a culture to provide information
and significant insights (recognized by others familiar with the cultures in question) on
a whole complex of cultural values and attitudes, expressed in common conversational
routines, and revealing a whole network of specific ‘cultural scripts’.
Wierzbicka’s work in general combines (i) an empirically based aim of finding some
universals that characterize all human languages, while also (ii) investigating the huge
variety of unique languages and modes of seeing and thinking the world and, to some
extent, translating/explicating the unique, culture-bound meanings by means of simpler
and perhaps universal concepts, and, finally (iii) criticizing18 the presumptions of those
scholars who imagine that they can use English words to fully capture all details of human
experience because English is such a rich and international language. Though Wierzbicka
did not characterize her methodology in the following terms, one could argue that her
approach is implicitly applying a form of TS (culture translation) upon the material of TN
(i.e. the incommensurable keywords for non-kin human relationships she analyses). In
Chapter 2 of Wierzbicka (1997), she does two things. First, she makes a case for a shift in
the meaning of the English ‘friend’, from meaning someone who is dear, loved and true
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 175

to a contemporary meaning of being someone who is enjoyable and close, that is, ‘a shift
from (habitual) affectionate thoughts to (occasional) pleasurable company’ (Wierzbicka
1997: 52). She sees the older meaning as being closer to the classic Roman conception
based on mutual good will and affection, and believes that the modern expression ‘close
friend’ reflects such a change, because, in the past, all friends were close friends (p. 53).
For this claim, she uses historical lexical evidence, but some of her observations seems
questionable and have been criticized.19
Second, and more important for TS, Wierzbicka maps the meanings of the friendship
concepts, scripts and their related incompatible taxonomies of interpersonal non-kin
relationships in English, Russian, Polish and Australian cultures through a comparative
analysis, resulting in a detailed list of explications of these terms, given in English with
simple words that are not unique to English, but translatable to all other languages.20 To
summarize the conclusion of her analysis, at least eleven non-identical friendship-like
concepts stand out (where I use the ≠ sign to indicate non-identity within the family of
related terms), namely, (English) Old-English friend ≠ present-English friend ≠ (Russian)
drug ≠ podruga ≠ prijatel’ ≠ tovarisc ≠ rodnye ≠ (Polish) kolega ≠ przyjaciel ≠ znajomy ≠
(Australian) mate.
Here we see a linguist not only focusing on texts and TN but also actively TS-translating
(without using specific semiotic concepts) cultural scripts for a whole set of non-identical
relationships with various similarities. Wierzbicka’s main point (and why we can see this
as TS-translations) is that the source and the target of a concept in any such translation are
non-isomorphic (not just linguistically but also culturally), not to be confused, and this
implies some degree of meaning shift that has to be interpreted within the larger culture
of any such notion.

TS within epoch, across cultures: Anthropological challenges

Investigating TS ‘within an epoch’ demands a caveat: Though instances of cultural
translation appear to be within a single epoch, this may only be in the sense of objective
global physical time. When people from different cultures meet – a New York-based
artist conversing with a farmer from Alabama, or a Californian anthropologist visiting
indigenous people in the Amazon – such meetings may display forms of cultural ‘non-
simultaneity’ (in the sense of Ernst Bloch’s Ungleichzeitigkeit21) if habitual patterns and
conceptions of people clash because they belong to a mixture of premodern, modern and
late modern forms of thinking and acting. Non-simultaneity may also appear within a
single ‘culture’ if fragments of premodern forms of actions, rituals, etc. exist in parallel
with different later forms.
The anthropologist Nita Kumar did her fieldwork in the Indian city of Banaras
(Varanasi), which she sees as ‘premodern’ and provincial; she studied the work and leisure
activities of the city’s artisans (Kumar 1992; 2017). It is well known that ethnographic
fieldwork as a research method has the aim of gaining a close and intimate familiarity
with a given group of individuals and their practices through an intensive involvement
with people serving as ‘informants’ in their natural environment – the ‘field’ – over an
extended period of time.22 Kumar discovered that, for her own fieldwork, she had to
face ‘the seeming incommensurability of the gap between myself, the Indian who was
an educated scholar, and the Indians I met, who were uneducated informants, even
while civilization and nation are supposed to be the prime determinants of identity’
(2017: 245). Kumar was curious to learn, as she explains, about ‘the differences in the
176 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

ideas of friendship between me, a veritable normative subject of Indian intellectual and
educational history, and my artisans, the indigenous working classes, the other subjects of
Indian history’ (2017: 245). In her reflections on her fieldwork, written some years later,
she relates that she ‘had planned to be a professional researcher collecting information
from informants; as it turned out, informants would interact with me only if I would be
a sister or a friend to them’ (p. 245). Thus, her informants ‘demanded’ her friendship;
she was not allowed just to record theirs. Though Kumar does not explicitly use the TS
perspective, it is arguable that her informants actually translated their own roles vis-à-
vis her into her being a much more familiar or ‘close’ person in a network of ties that
could involve utility as well as affection, and even love. The translation was mutual; she
accepted it, and often had a great time with them.
This experience, to be understood as a translational process of a cross-cultural kind,
came with a certain irony, as she relates, namely,

that the anthropological project of taking their subjectivities seriously turned around
to my being aggressively taught by them of their agency, not their passivity. Their
exercise of agency and control in our relationship provided the very vocabulary for
it, and resulted in an ironic defeat for me, and a victory for them. I did not succeed
in transforming them into my ‘informants’ without first graduating into their ‘friend’
and ‘sister’.
(p. 246)

As described in greater detail in her fieldwork memoirs (Kumar 1992), these (what
I am tempted to call) translational friendships were varied, took different forms and
often resembled some kind of ‘fictive kinship’ (though she doesn’t use this technical
anthropological term), such as becoming someone’s ‘sister’ or ‘daughter’ and, thereby,
also inheriting all of that person’s other family relationships. For instance, ‘before I knew
it I was established as his older sister. This was no mere formality. I was his wife’s sister-
in-law, his parents’ daughter, his children’s bua (paternal aunt), and many convoluted
relationships with the rest of his large extended family’ (1992: 147). Once Kumar
fathomed what was going on, she could also, in certain situations, take the initiative to
become a person’s ‘sister out of choice’ (p. 175), when that person was busy and therefore
elusive, and Kumar, in addition, wanted to interact with his quiet daughter and illiterate
wife, as she says, ‘eat with his family, sleep overnight with them, share their worries
and thoughts (p. 147) and she realized that the fictive kinship could make them more
comfortable and allowed her to reciprocate in some ways for their extensive help to
her. In the world of the artisans of Banaras, there seemed to be no space for voluntarily
serving a stranger by answering questions about many aspects of their own personal lives.
The stranger had to be translated into a friend. A brass-smith with strong theatre interests
‘got tired of … [Kumar’s] empty questioning’ and invited her home ‘for meals and the
festival of Holi’, and thus she ‘was adopted as a family member thenceforth and everyone
breathed easier’ (2017: 246). To other informants, Kumar developed close ties, similar
to ‘a hearty colleague’s relationship’ (1992: 189), such as that with a poet, who was ‘no
brother’, but a good friend who ‘shed many friendly reflections on my task’ (2017: 246).
He embarrassed her by his generosity (1992: 177), and perhaps also by what she admits
to be ‘an ease with emotions’ that she ‘had never learned to communicate’ (1992: 190).
So many times, a local informant translated the anthropologist into a friend (often via
fictive kinship).23 The anthropologist herself could be troubled about this, or at least
ambivalent, being, on the one hand, a friend to many people, as Kumar noted, ‘almost
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 177

in the literal sense of the word (“a person attached to another by respect or affection”)’
(1992: 189) and, on the other hand, professionally having a ‘hidden agenda’ that pricked
her conscience (p. 189). This unease with her own motivation can be seen as questioning
how to translate or accommodate her own, more modern, notion of friendship – a notion
that is often slightly romanticized as being a purely non-instrumental relationship for its
own sake – to a more pragmatic notion of friendship as also involving motivations of
utility and pleasure.
Looking back, this prompted Kumar to ask if she did ‘merely playact the gestures of
friendship?’ (2017: 246), yet she was sure that there ‘was something more real than the
performance’. However, she also concluded that what both she herself and her informants
were doing was performing friendship, and doing so perfectly: ‘Performing friendship
was what there was to do’ (p. 246). This performative perspective upon friendship in
contemporary India (not yet explicit in her 1992 memoir) is inspired by more recent
anthropological studies of how people may play with hierarchical gendered roles. One
could say that, at this point, performance studies meets translation studies. Kumar could
as well have concluded her 2017 article by claiming that ‘translating friendship was
what there was to do’. Remember the distinction in performance studies between ‘is
performance’ and ‘as performance’, like ‘theatre is a performance’, while almost anything
can be analysed in its performative aspect ‘as performance’ (see Note 9). So, the question
that was nagging Kumar was ‘were these friendships for good?’, that is, friendships
definitively, or were they ‘just playacts’, performances? As an answer, with no further
analysis, she rejects the relevance of this distinction, thereby distancing herself from a
romanticized, idealistic and modern idea about ‘true’, authentic friendship versus more
superficial relationships. By this move, I think, Kumar avoids a modernist-existentialist
jargon of authenticity that denigrates common social behaviours as being ‘just’ performed
(‘in bad faith’, mauvais fois, as it were, to use Sartre’s and de Beauvoir’s term), that is,
performed in self-deceiving modes that ignore individual freedom not to conform to
social demands of performing a role in a special way. Kumar simply observes that the
translation (or performance) of friendship actually worked.
Does it always work? Can some aspects of friendship become untranslatable in certain
situations? It is far from trivial (or ethically uncomplicated) to use friendship as ‘a
method’24 in ethnography. The anthropologist can come to question her own concept of
friendship, or the nature of a relationship with an informant, especially in circumstances
of conflict and war that may suddenly block face-to-face contact but generate needs for
material aid to an informant. This is exemplified by the work of a Dutch anthropologist,
Marina de Regt, who describes in detail her relationship with Yemeni friends, especially
a woman referred to as Noura. De Regt and Noura became close friends after their
first meeting in Yemen in 1993, and only later, but long before the present war, Noura
became one of her informants (De Regt 2015; 2019; forthcoming). Due to the war in
Yemen it became impossible for de Regt to return; phone contact became essential for
her to follow the situation, and she started sending money to support Noura, who was
in dire need. As reflected in De Regt’s articles (aiming at discussing the ethical dilemma
of combining friendship with research), their relationship changed, from an equal one
of mutual care, affection, shared activities like vivid discussions about politics, to one
in which De Regt felt reduced to a money provider, though she also felt guilt about her
more privileged situation. Many details have been omitted from this brief summary, but
it is fair to say that, due to circumstances, a modern kind of private friendship, centred on
conversations, leisure activities, mutual sharing of personal information and affection for
the other person for her own sake, was slowly translated by the semiotic constraints of the
178 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

circumstances, so to say, into an unequal relationship more like a patron-client relation,

of providing material support, perhaps in exchange for new information from the field,
but with a decreased sense of emotional mutuality. De Regt noticed that ‘the emphasis in
our phone conversations is mostly on her. She only calls when she needs money or when
something has happened in Yemen’ (2015: 62), and this reminded De Regt about the kind
of relationship that many migrants from developing countries have with their relatives
back home – being worried that, when they receive a call, they will be asked for money.
This TS of one instance of a model of friendship (idealized as equal, mutual, free of
power and material obligations) turning into another relationship is a multidimensional
process, which involves changes in the two persons’ mutuality, emotions, degrees of
freedom, wealth and well-being, implying also changing commitments, manipulation,
guilt and pain. In her 2015 paper De Regt felt that her relationship with Noura was no
longer one of friendship, rather one of fictive kinship, and she felt that they had ‘become
sentenced to each other’ (p. 65); in her 2019 follow-up she still perceives a friendship,
though ‘going through difficult times’, as the war precluded ‘any opportunity for Noura
to return my gifts in her own immaterial ways’ (p. 109); while De Regt (in a forthcoming
publication) details how her ‘financial support to Noura has come to an end, and with it
our friendship’. In this later paper De Regt also describes other friends in Yemen whom
she still helps, with the difference that they only occasionally ask for financial help, and
their ‘contact is not only based on requests for money’. In summary, De Regt offers a
series of forthright and thought-provoking accounts of clashes between friends in the
cultural translation of friendship when its boundary conditions put severe constraints on
the two friends’ actions and reactions.

TS within the Western tradition, across epochs: Virtue, fraternity, best friends?
Is it possible to find a long historical line of TS translation from virtue friendship, from
the ancient Greeks up onto the modern notion of best friendship as a private relation
of intimate trust, affection and confidentiality? A tentative affirmative answer can be
given, based on a collaborative attempt by twelve scholars, organized by Barbara Caine,
to map the history of friendship in the West, that is, its meanings, the nature and changing
patterns of friendship from the ancient times to late modernity (Caine 2009). After a brief
summary of this collective work, we will question its implicit idea – that it is possible to
reconstruct a complex history of friendship in the West – by asking if this story is also
about a complex of translational processes.
Although the transformations of friendship ideals and practices through epochs (as
schematized in Figure 9.3) are extremely complex, some patterns stand out. Caine’s
research collective discusses classical ideals, especially Cicero’s thinking on friendship,
which set out the enduring Greek and Roman conceptions of friendship that had a great
influence up through the Renaissance. The Greek philia involved, as noted above, a
wider range of relationships, including those with kin, guests and political allies. While
there were competing visions of how such bonds should be regarded and sustained, the
two most persistent classical conceptions were those of Aristotle and Cicero, who both
stressed the shared moral commitments in friendships and being each other’s equals.
Cicero (106–43 BCE) became the basis of discussions of friendship for centuries to come,
up to the Renaissance. The ideals were transformed/translated in response to Christianity,
which preached universal love and charity rather than exclusive friendship, suggesting
that human relationships should serve not the people in them, so much as God. These
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 179

values, and monasticism, came to overshadow ancient ideals, and medieval society altered
ideas about friendship as well, regarding the relationship as a way to cement ties and
delineate obligations between unequal parties; friendship became the glue of feudalism.25
Yet personal friendship re-emerged in the twelfth century, especially in the Cistercian
monk Aelred of Rievaulx, who tried, both theoretically and practically, to reconcile
Cicero’s celebration of ideal friendship with the Christian ideas of the vertical love of
God. But there were also ‘pacts of friendship’ between men who were equals – ties so
close that the friends sometimes chose to be buried together. During the Renaissance,
men and women elaborated on classical and medieval traditions, creating a new culture
of friendship, evident in double portraits, stylized letters and ritual gift-giving. Then,
due to the Enlightenment, there is evidence that equality in relationships became more
important, and friendships were viewed in a more secular light, though the relationships
were increasingly sentimentalized. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, women’s
friendship gained greater notice, especially in literature (once women ‘took up the
pen’, it became possible for the historians of Caine’s team to take a more gendered and
differentiating approach to friendship). In the nineteenth century, there are far richer
sources to show the variety of ways in which different classes, races and sexes envisioned
friendship and its political implications. Working-class movements expressed their
revolutionary goals in terms of friendship and fraternity; middle-class reformers hoped
to bridge class differences with the poor through practices of friendship. An array of
social changes affected friendship in the twentieth century. Whereas, in earlier centuries,
friendship often entailed public obligations and services, today friends may render
service to each other, but it is of a more private and emotional nature, and friendship
has come to be envisioned less instrumentally. Another change was a re-emergence of
homophobia, which affected, especially, heterosexual male friendships. Once idealized
as the quintessential form of friendship, men’s relationships changed dramatically, as
fears of homosexuality developed. Simultaneously, women’s bonds, which had seemed of
secondary importance to the public in earlier periods, came almost to define friendship
in the modern era. Another intriguing development was the way that people eager for
political change conceived of friendship. It had earlier been questioned whether true
amity was possible across racial, class or ethnic divides, but, by the twentieth century such
doubts were disappearing, and many came to see friendship as possessing a power to unite
the divided and transform politics – quite a translation of Aristotelian ‘civic friendship’.
The contributors to the final parts of Caine (2009) suggest that, in contemporary society,
friendship has become a relationship of unprecedented importance.
If the whole TS of friendship in the West, though complex and fragmented, displays
emotional continuities in its forms, there are also breaks, or at least one remarkable
relocation of friendship from the sphere of the community or polis (as distinct from a
not-yet-emerged bourgeois public) to a more private sphere. As noted by David Garrioch
(in Caine 2009: 202, drawing on the work of Allan Silver), the tradition of Scottish moral
economists (Hume, Smith, Ferguson) argues that it was only in commercial societies of
the kind they advocated and which were emerging at that time, that true friendship was
possible: ‘For Smith, the development of markets, which were impersonal and based on
self-interest, promoted the appearance of another, qualitatively different sphere of life in
which a superior form of friendship could be cultivated’ (Caine 2009: 202), that is, outside
the sphere of necessity and instrumental interest.26 Genuine friendships – established for
their own sake – were not seen as possible at the marketplace, in the factories or in poor
rural settings. Neither was friendship sustained by the church, as it was difficult to translate
180 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

this mutual and preferential form of love into the Christian dogma of the non-preferential
love of a heavenly Father (it may be a moot point whether philia was (mis)translated into
agape or simply displaced by charity).27 And in the public sphere, and especially in the
state, friendship, patronage and networks had already ‘lost something of their charm’28
due to the aim of building strong institutions based upon meritocratic norms and rational
bureaucracy, and avoiding cronyism and nepotism. So, when friendship was translated
into modernity, it became a private affair, and its best versions passed, from emphasizing
its virtuous character to centring upon emotions, psychological closeness and intimacy.
A note on the continuity between the ancient and modern forms of friendship:
Obviously the Athenian polis, where Aristotle developed his theory of friendship,
differed a great deal from late modernity, but there are also similarities that may have
facilitated smoother translations, not only of texts but also of the famous three types (as
real generalities) of friendship that Aristotle described – those motivated by pleasure,
utility and virtue – so that, in one sense, this translation is a part of a complex of civilizing
processes within the evolution of Western societies. Some of the similarities between
ancient and modern models of friendship (especially translating virtue friendship into
‘best’ or ‘close’ friendship) are related to affluence as a boundary condition for these
models, and to what Henrich (2020) describes as weird people, that is, that peculiar
minority of humanity coming from societies that are Western, Educated, Industrialized,
Rich and Democratic (who also have an exceptional psychology, as Henrich points out).
The Athenian polis was not industrialized, but Aristotle came from the aristocracy and
was, by contemporary standards, an educated citizen who was well-off. The aristocrats
could afford to have friends, not just as a means ‘to harm one’s enemies’29 or as political
allies but for their own sake, cultivating virtue.
This may help explain the astonishing ease by which Aristotle’s philosophical analysis
can be translated into a critical version of present-day social psychology, as exemplified
by a recent study (and a kind of ‘test’ of Aristotle) by Anderson and Fowers (2020).
By translating the ancient typology forwarded by Aristotle to assess friends’ various
characteristics, they discovered important variation across friendships of today,
noting that such ‘friendship characteristics appear to have important implications for
understanding the role of friends in happiness and flourishing’ (p. 276). Their ‘test’ and
translation of Aristotelian friendship is part of an important critique of present-day social
research for being distortive to the best kinds of friendship, because it is guided by ‘an
impoverished and largely implicit theory’ with a narrow instrumental and individualistic
perspective, suggesting that what is important about friendship for people (being asked to
self-report their ‘friendship satisfaction’) are only the private, personal benefits that the
friends obtain (Fowers and Anderson 2018: 185ff). The implication is that much social
science research on friendship tends to ignore that relationship’s communal dimension,
which affords individuals with security and experiences of caring for and being for others
as ends in themselves. By translating the Aristotelian axiology of friendship, Fowers and
Anderson remind us of five critical elements of a contemporary friendship relationship,
namely, that (1) what is most valued in the best kinds of friendship are the friend’s welfare
and the friendship itself; (2) the good friend’s pattern of acting and being contributes
to its robustness; (3) the friend brings forth one’s best self through encouragement; (4)
the trust in the relation enables security, conversational quality and possibilities of self-
reflection and self-improvement; and, finally, that (5) friends help each other to pursue
common goals and stay committed to them. Thus, it is not lost in their TS of Aristotle’s
model that shared activities within a good friendship are constitutive of the friendship
itself; it is its own ends and means, not a means to any higher or ulterior end.
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 181

How about translating friendship before the ages of the Greek polis? As shown by
Moses Finley, in his study of the heroic world of Odysseus in the archaic period, there was
a special kind of ritualized friendship, xenia (sometimes translated as ‘guest-friendship’),
that could be entered into by two powerful men who were not from the same family,
tribe or area. To understand its function, it must be remembered that such men were
obsessed with status, and we should not miss the double significance of wealth: ‘The
circulation of treasure was as essential a part of heroic life as its acquisition; and it was
this movement, the fact of its existence and the orbits it followed that set that life [of a
hero] apart from any other life of accumulation’ (Finley 1977: 125). Finley explains that,
in this unlettered epoch,

the heroic world was unable to visualize any achievement or relationship except in
concrete terms. The gods were anthropomorphized, the emotions and feelings were
located in specific organs of the body, even the soul was materialized. Every quality or
state had to be translated into some specific symbol, honor into a trophy, friendship
into treasure, marriage into gifts of cattle.
(p. 125)

And ‘trust into ritual objects’, adds his student, Gabriel Herman (1987: 50, 61) in his
detailed study of xenia and its role in Ancient Greece before the emergence of city states
and, later, in parallel with them. The personal xenia between men that criss-crossed the
ancient world with an extensive network of personal alliances followed a specific etiquette
for that relationship’s establishment, in which an initial exchange of gifts was an essential
part. It was almost a rite de passage that effectively translated a stranger into a friend.
This exchange differed from other gift exchanges by the need of having the counter-gift
follow promptly on the reception of the first gift; furthermore, the two gifts had to be of
a commensurate intrinsic value. Over time, this exchange gave rise to a more specialized
form of gift, called the symbolon, the only function of which was to prove one’s identity (a
bone, coin, tablet, or similar object was broken into two complementary pieces that could
later be shown to fit together). Thus, the ritual can ‘be viewed as effecting a breakthrough
in the psychological barriers of strangerness and hostility’ (Herman 1987: 69), changing
their relative positions. Herman notes that ritualized friendship, abundantly attested in
both Greek and Latin sources from all periods of classical antiquity, disappears from view
in late antiquity (maybe due to another TS): ‘There are good reasons to assume, however,
that it was gradually annexed by the Christian Church, since it reappears in a new guise
in the early medieval variants of godparenthood: Latin compaternitas, and Byzantine
synteknia’ (Herman 2012).

TS across epochs and cultures: Aristotelean friendship in Ming China

Before we discuss the TS character of the next case, Matteo Ricci’s translation of the
Western philosophical canon of virtuous friendship into Chinese culture, we must
beware the common presumption that there was a complete lack of theoretical interest
in friendship in premodern China. For instance, reviewing a collection of philosophical
treatments of friendship in a range of cultures, the reviewer Robert Burns makes the
sweeping statement that

[w]hat certainly emerges from the essays on China, Japan, and India is that in these
Oriental cultures there is apparently nothing to compare with the concentration
182 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

on friendship as a major theme which characterizes all cultures influenced by the

Graeco-Roman philosophy and Semitic religions (including Islam) at least up until
modern times.
(Burns 1997: 351)

But such comparisons are difficult to make, tend to overgeneralize differences and may
seem a little outdated.30 If we consider the situation regarding friendship in premodern
China more in detail – as described by Whalen Lai (1996) in the book reviewed by
Burns – the picture is more complex. On the one hand it is correct, as Lai notes, that
‘Confucianism does not associate love with friendship as the Greeks with the filia would’
(p. 223); rather, it emphasizes trust, as evidenced by the Analects of Confucius (fifth
to sixth century BCE).31 Yet the virtue of trust – ‘required of all men in in all social
dealings’ – ‘is not qualitatively unique to friends’ (p. 223), so this seems to indicate that,
indeed, friendship was simply ‘not a central concept in China’ (p. 218). Real friendships,
though, existed and could be personal, but they were not premised on self-disclosure
as in modern forms of friendship; the Confucian gentlemen did not need ‘to know
each other too intimately’ (Lai 1996: 228). But Lai also shows how poets of the Tang
dynasty (616–907 CE) ‘legitimized friendship but also gave private feelings a public form’
(p. 239), and how the literati of a more neo-Daoist cast, later on (in the ninth to tenth
centuries CE), brought some emotional and aesthetic dimensions into a relationship that
was previously seen as founded on rites and rituals. Thus, Lai’s essay takes a long-range
look at the issue of friendship in Confucian China, from its roots in Confucius’s own
thinking, via Confucian scholars, through the eras of Han and Wei-Chin, and further
on to a real ‘flowering of friendship ideology’ in Late Ming (1368–1644 CE), where it
became ‘the radical means of restoring humanness to government’ (Lai 1996: 244). For
this radical agenda, Lai believes that it can be ‘translated into a postmodern discourse on
virtue’ (p. 245), in which one works politically for ‘the communal good’ upon which a
community is based, discerning the borders between public and private interests – Lai asks,
‘Do we not still believe that somehow a Good Society based on friendship is possible?’
(1996:249).
Wei-cheng Chu’s essay, with the apt title, ‘The Utility of “Translated Friendship” for
the Sinophone World: Past and Present’ (Chu 2017), deserves attention. Chu describes
how Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), an Italian Jesuit priest and founding figure of the Jesuit
China missions, translated a selection of Western philosophical friendship discourse
into a Chinese pamphlet, entitled You Lun, [On Friendship], published in 1596 (Ricci
2009). In 1582 Ricci had arrived at the Portuguese settlement of Macau, where he began
his missionary work in China.32 When Wei-cheng Chu uses the notion of ‘translated
friendship’ in his essay, it is not in the simple sense of a TN of specific works of Aristotle
or other classics; what Ricci did was to distil a core of ideas on virtue friendship from
Renaissance Latin texts33 into seventy-six (in the first edition) and, later, one hundred
(in the third) thought-provoking Chinese maxims, written in a masterful classical style.
According to his recent translator, Timothy Billings (2009), these sayings established his
reputation as a great sage. Lai concurs:

Many Chinese were drawn to the … passages on friendship from Aristotle’s

Nichomachaean Ethics, Plato’s Republic, Cicero’s De Amicitia, plus other Greek
and Latin writings. This interest in friendship was however more than academic. It
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 183

informed the political platform of the ‘reform party’, the Tung-lin Academy which was
then opposing the abuse of power by the eunuchs at court.
(Lai 1996: 217; cf. McDermott 1992)

Both Lai and Chu emphasize that what was being translated was a whole package of
idealistic ideas about friendship in the West, into a specific Chinese context, and that
these ideas fell in the fertile soil of interpreters. There was already in the intellectual
environment of late-Ming China ‘exciting new talks on friendship’, though this tradition
of Chinese discourse on friendship was less elaborate than the Western one. Thus, one
cannot simply call Ricci’s TS of friendship a direct Western import.34 What was it, then?
Chu notices the intervenient character of Ricci’s translation as being a part of his larger
missionary project, so its ‘utility’ is to be found in this context, and Chu suggests that such
scholarship-based interventions may also be possible in modernity – that ‘the modern
form of friendship can still be expected to exert a significant interventionary [sic] effect in
shaking off the traditional pull’ (Chu 2017: 181). Remember that ‘mission’ for Christians
is about sending the Holy Spirit into the world (from Latin mittere, ‘send’), a project
that needs forms of TS – a variety of translational semioses! By establishing himself as
a sage within a Chinese context, Ricci could, at least temporarily, translate himself into
a local interlocutor of the literati who were critically opposed to the strict hierarchy
of imperial rule. Scholars like Billings have shown in detail that disregarding ‘whether
Ricci actually tried to accommodate European ideas about friendship to what he thought
might appeal to Chinese readers, his essay was nonetheless inserted into a preexisting
discourse on friendship, notwithstanding fundamental differences between the two’
(Billings 2009: 50ff).
If one is worried that ‘much of the debate about intersemiotic translation is still biased
toward language, or models itself on interlinguistic translation’ (Marais 2019: 62), we
must, in the present context, remember that Ricci’s translation is not just about translating
or rewriting texts of friendship from European languages into Chinese – it is part of a
larger translation35 of ideas, people, and discourses, integral to his general mission, and
in a sense also including a translation of himself in this new context, by aligning himself
with the Confucian elite of literati. As Burke (2007a: 9) observes, ‘translation implies
‘negotiation’ and, thus,

Matteo Ricci discovered that if he dressed as a priest no one would take him seriously,
so he dressed like a Confucian scholar instead, thus ‘translating’ his social position
into Chinese. He allowed the Chinese whom he converted to pay reverence to their
ancestors in the traditional manner, arguing that this was a social custom rather than
a religious one. He translated the word ‘God’ by the neologism Tianzhu [Tianzi],
literally ‘Lord of Heaven’, and allowed Chinese Christians to refer simply to Tian,
‘Heaven’, as Confucius had done.

The first maxim in Ricci’s On Friendship is retranslated into English as ‘My friend is not
an other, but half of myself, and thus a second me – I must therefore regard my friend as
myself’ (Ricci 2009: 91), echoing Aristotle’s Ethics, and setting a strong point of departure
not just for the following maxims but also for Ricci himself in making new friends. Ricci’s
pamphlet was published and republished twice in his lifetime by several of his befriended
local officials – officially without Ricci’s knowledge, ‘since the Jesuits were not allowed to
184 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

print without approval from Rome, which could take years’ (Billings 2009: 2). Chen Jiru
(1558–1639), a Ming Dynasty writer, wrote a preface to the maxims, emphasizing that
‘[u]nless there are friendships, the other four [of the five cardinal] relationships cannot be
fixed’ (Wang 2017: 27; cf. Billings 2009: 48), thus, situating Ricci’s work on friendship
tightly within the Confucian context.36
Ricci’s intervenient pamphlet was not singular; five decades later, in 1647, another
Italian Jesuit, Martino Martini, wrote a sequel, called Pamphlet on Gathering Friends.
Martini warns the reader that not all love is compatible with friendship. He brings to
the attention an ambiguity in male friendship that can be paraphrased as a distinction
between ‘those who love my body’ and ‘those who befriend my heart’. This concern
about conflating homosociality and homosexuality was also Ricci’s, argues the scholar
Giovanni Vitiello:

In the cultural translation that Ricci and Martini’s books mean to provide, sexuality is
not left out. Their topic being friendship between two men, the sexuality in question
cannot but be male homosexuality. By hinting at a disruption between friendship and
homoeroticism, apparently triggered by their perceived contiguity, the two Europeans
are also smuggling into China a sexual ideology that implies opprobrium towards
sodomy.
(Vitiello 2000: 251)

No such concerns were present in the late Ming elite circles of literati. ‘We know how
appalled Ricci was at the popularity of and lack of legal and social prejudice towards
homosexuality in the China he visited, as well as how surprised some Chinese commentators
were at the Europeans’ criminalization of it’ (Vitiello 2000: 251). In Ricci’s TS translation
of friendship across cultures and epochs, while something is kept (e.g. the idealization of
equality in friendship), something is also lost (going from an Aristotelian to a Confucian
context), and something new (such as a more demarcated border between homosociality
and homosexuality) is created, which in this case raises new problems.

ANALYTIC TOOLS FOR ANALYSING SOCIO-COGNITIVE

CHANGES AS PART OF TS
Translating friendship across cultures and epochs actualizes a need for better tools for
analysing the semiotic changes that take place in concepts and practices of friendship.
In this section, I suggest one such tool, taken from the study of conceptual change in
philosophy of science in the post-Kuhnian tradition. Famously, Kuhn claimed the existence
of certain forms of incommensurability between two successive paradigms, for example,
that the concept of ‘mass’ in Einstein’s theories is untranslatable to or incommensurable
with mass in classical Newtonian mechanics (the word is the same but ‘mass’ in Einstein
is another concept: mass times the square of the speed of light being equivalent to energy,
E = mc2).
Chen and Barker (2000) took up the artificial intelligence (AI)-inspired notion
of frames to analyse the degree to which two similar concepts (belonging to different
scientific paradigms or taxonomies) are similar or different, thus, decomposing the notion
of incommensurability and allowing for a more detailed analysis of conceptual change.
They showed that, if concepts are represented as AI-like frames, transformation (not to
say translation) from one taxonomy to another can be achieved in a piecemeal fashion,
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 185

without a Kuhnian crisis stage, and that a new taxonomy can be generated stepwise out
of the old frame. If one remembers that, while their object of analysis – scientific progress
understood as changes in taxonomies, frames, concepts and theories – involves other
mechanisms than the TS translation of friendship through epochal time and cultural space
(involving not just concepts but also practices, social norms and discourses), it is still
possible to envision a detailed analysis of changes in the latter using a similar approach.
By analysing both the cross-epochal evolving friendship tradition in philosophy, with its
changing ideas about friendship, represented as frames, and this tradition’s transformation
into a proliferation of empirical scientific disciplines and the humanities, each with
their own variant of some model of friendship, and how they contribute to our present
understanding of models of ancient, medieval and modern friendship, it may be possible
to construct an alternative and broader notion of TS that also involves social, cognitive
and cultural practices.
Space prohibits an extended investigation along these lines, so, just a few remarks about
the components of such an analysis will do. A partial frame representation of friendship
may involve ‘social interpersonal relation’ as a superordinate concept, and ‘friendship’ (of
some form) as the subordinate concept, and can be represented as a specific combination of
attribute-related values of each attribute. For example, the attributes of ‘social interpersonal
relation’ may be ‘degrees of freedom in the relation’, ‘formation’, ‘activity location’,
‘motivation’, ‘degree of idealisation’ and so on. For each attribute, a set of values can be
defined (like ‘high’/‘medium’/‘low’ for the attribute ‘degrees of freedom’; ‘self-chosen’/‘other-
chosen’ for the attribute ‘formation’; ‘public’/‘private’ for the attribute ‘activity location’
that also refers to the visibility of the relationship; ‘reproductive utility’/‘other utility’/‘
pleasure’/‘virtue’/‘intimacy’ for the attribute ‘motivation’; ‘high’/‘low’ for the ‘degree of
idealisation’ attribute). Now a cluster of subordinate kinds of interpersonal relations can
be characterized by their combination of attribute-related values: romantic relationship,
friendship (several forms possible), marriage, patronage, political allies, religious ‘brothers’
or ‘sisters’, colleagues and so on, each characterized by differences and similarities in their
combinations of attribute-related values. The next step in the analysis would be recursively
analysing friendship (now as a superordinate concept) and its attributes and values in
greater detail to characterize one of its forms as a sub-subordinate concept.
Though the focus in Chen and Barker (2000) was centred on theoretical concepts, the
approach can be adapted to TS by focusing on the semiosis of practices of interpersonal
relationships that are partly directed by social norms and ideals. The long process of TS
of ancient virtue or guest friendship forms into modern intimate ‘best’ friendship can be
represented by mapping the two different frames, and analysing how the change of one
into another could occur stepwise, but still involve losses and adaptations in the process.

DISCUSSION OF LIMITATIONS AND CHALLENGES

How can we delimit a semiotic notion of translation of relationships through epochs,
cultures and other social markers (like gender, age and ethnicity)? Are all kinds of cultural
changes examples of TS, and what about creation, growth, decay and disappearance? From
the point of view of interlingual text translation, a TN process is sharply distinguished
from the creation of the text in the first place, and from its eventual loss (e.g. we have
lost Aristotle’s texts on poetics and botany). Should TS not also allow for a separate
semiotic notion about cultural context-dependent creation of new meaning? There is still
theoretical work to be done to spell out a taxonomy of TS forms.
186 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

We have pursued the idea of expanding the concept of translation in translation studies
to cover non-linguistic forms of translation, a view compatible with and inspired by the
(bio)semiotic approach to meaning-making based on sign action, not only among humans
but throughout living nature. But why call processes such as ‘modifying cultural practices
though historical time’, or ‘letting ideals or practices from another culture inspire one’s
own’ a translation, rather than interpretation? Referring to ‘interpretative semiotics’
as semiotic approach to translation within Peircean semiotics, Eco and Nergaard
(1998: 219) observe that, within this approach, translation is seen ‘as a subspecies of
interpretation (there are, by contrast, many interpretations that cannot be strictly defined
as translation)’. Thus, interpretation is the more general concept and translation a
subspecies. Yet, they also paraphrase Peirce’s claim that an ‘interpretant is any sign which
explains or “translates” the first one’ (Eco and Nergaard 1998: 219), as Marais (2019)
also emphasizes. We could simply suggest that modern friendship practices emerged in
part by interpreting ancient ones within a new historical context, and changing them.
Would it make any difference? An answer may await the development of a more detailed
theory of TS that integrates accounts for causal and hermeneutic processes, though a
guess is that it depends upon what kinds of context, so the epistemic benefits of applying
the perspectives of TS are particularly pertinent to situations of cultural translation (as
depicted in Figure 9.3), where different cultures meet, clash or diverge along new routes.
A challenge facing the study of changes in friendship practices through time is that
we often only have written sources to rely on, and we need to consider the time- and
culture-specific rhetorical styles for performing bonds that can be both instrumental
and emotional. Are such styles a translational device between emotions and actions?
In discussing the relation between two English spies in Bordeaux in 1590 – the exiled
Anthony Standen and Francis Bacon’s brother Anthony – the Renaissance researcher Will
Tosh notes that

the acquaintance developed between Standen and [Bacon] in 1591 reveals something
about the nature of instrumental friendships between men, and the ease with which
a mutually beneficial relationship (what we might think of today as a ‘professional’
acquaintanceship) could come to be draped in an affective language of loyalty and
favour. This is not to suggest that such language was inauthentically applied: in the
sixteenth century, relations of utility as well as emotional bonds were expressed in the
highly personalised terms of intimate friendship.
(Tosh 2016: 20)

Tosh argues that the ‘friendship spaces’ of early modern England permitted the expression
of male same-sex intimacy to a greater extent than has previously been acknowledged.
The search for expanded or alternative forms of translation, when applied to human
beings, runs into the same difficulty as do investigations of body language: Most often,
spoken and body language are not separate, but intertwined, just as interwoven as thought
and language can be. It is true, as Peirce noted, that sign action ontologically covers
more than language, but in humans, our semiotic systems are intermingled. TN is a part
of TS, and the risk of reducing all translation to interlingual translation is not the same
as admitting concepts like semiosis and TS the status of being most general. Children
and adolescents learn to perform culture-specific practices of friendship quite early on,
when they are also still learning the performance of spoken and written language. In the
Renaissance, Cicero’s Letters to Friends and Letters to Atticus were used, according to Will
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 187

Tosh, ‘to teach Latin in schoolrooms, and the style and wit of his letters were emulated
by correspondents later in life. The key was to play cleverly on the original phrases and
ideas, and to draw on Cicero’s philosophic and political approach, rather than slavishly
imitate his sentences’ (p. 31). This applies to our spy Anthony and his friend Faunt, as
Tosh observes, ‘[w]hen Anthony made ”comparison of our well grounded frendshippe
with that we find to have bene betweene Tully [Cicero] and Atticus”, Faunt [his epistolary
friend] was delighted’ (p. 46), because it ‘lifted the nature of their relationship from the
estimable field of friendships in general, to the heights of the virtuous friendship par
excellence’ (p. 46). If we had access to the right performative resources and a modicum
of emotional intelligence, ancient models of friendship could be TS-translated into
contemporary trust and intimacy.

CONCLUSION
It is likely that people have always made friends, but as exemplified by the cases we
have discussed, such relationships have been approached differently by different people,
times, cultures and disciplines, so as to make the extent to which we can talk about ‘the
same’ phenomenon contested. However, this situation offers us a rich phenomenology,
amendable for a taxonomy of the fluid forms of this whole cluster of relationship types
and their translational metamorphoses, now receiving an increased interdisciplinary
attention from fields such as history, anthropology, philosophy, sociology and
psychology. It was argued that a theoretically more general concept of translation, TS,
covering not just interlingual but cross-cultural and cross-epochal translational processes,
semiotically conceived, can help to make sense of friendship as a universal relational
semiotic phenomenon, expressed and performed in a variety of context-dependent modes
across cultural times and spaces. Cases such as those we discussed provide data for such
an idea, if not a theory, of translated friendship in which this relational phenomenon
is seen as a configuration of practices, norms and ideals, sociopsychological attitudes,
obligations, expectations and ways of performing this relationship, not only verbally
but also emotionally, embodied and embedded within cultural matrices. Thus, a more
advanced theory of general translation could serve to develop a notion of normative
interpersonal configurations as both social and psychological dispositions to behave (or
practice social action) in some particular manners, following patterns that allow the
translation and transformation of these patterns across psychological and social space and
time. Friendship configurations could, thus, be grasped as evolving across ‘big’ (historical)
times and (cultural) spaces, and to one of our initial questions, we can answer yes: There
is a general story of friendship to be told, translated and retranslated many times.

NOTES
1 Herman (1987: 61), cf. the discussion below on the symbols of ritualized friendship.
2 In citations, CP is followed by the volume, and paragraph number of Peirce (1932, 1933,
1935 or 1958).
3 The view of translation as involving interpretation and, thus, semiosis, is a relatively
uncontroversial view in translation studies (Eco and Nergaard 1998); what is alternative
in TS, as developed here and in Marais (2019), is that interpretation can be of other signs
188 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

than lingual ones, and that whenever spoken or written language is involved, it is with an
emphasis upon the embeddedness of intertextual translation within broader practices of
transmission across time and space.
4 Shmoop University Inc. at https://www.shmoop.com/decameron/friendship-quotes.html
(accessed October 2020; can also be found at www.archive.org).
5 Smit and Morrison (2010); Prusiński (2018); see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_
with_benefits
6 For such a third position, cf. Pym and Turk (1998).
7 For treatments within translation studies of ‘cultural translation’, see, for example Buden
et al. (2009), Bandia (2014), Maitland (2017) and (with an emphasis on the external origins
of this notion) Conway (2019).
8 This is pointed out in the entry on interpretatio graeca in the en.wikipedia.org that contains
such a detailed list.
9 See Schechner and Brady (2013: 38ff) for a discussion about ‘is’ and ‘as’ performance.
Much more can be studied ‘as’ performance than what a given culture or some
circumstances typically see ‘is’ performance. The general point (also relevant for
translation studies) is that ‘[e]verything and anything can be studied “as” any discipline of
study – physics, economics, law, etc. What the “as” says is that the object of study will be
regarded “from the perspective of,” “in terms of,” “interrogated by” a particular discipline
of study’ (Schechner and Brady 2013: 42). By the way, there are obvious intersections
between translation studies and performance studies; for example, hybrid performances
(which incorporate elements from two or more different cultures or cultural sources) can be
studied as alternative forms of translation.
10 In such a perspective upon, for instance, the emergence of the Renaissance of the twelfth
century, the TN of ancient Greek texts (related to an increased contact with the Islamic
world in Spain, and with Byzantium, that allowed Europeans to translate works of Hellenic
and Islamic authors, especially Aristotle) was embedded in a more complex TS of an ancient
worldview into a Christian worldview. The TS of the philosophy of friendship was part
of this. In implying, but not explicating, a distinction between TN and TS, David Konstan
(1997) comments upon Derrida’s remark that, though Hegel’s Idea is not Plato’s Idea, ‘the
word Idea is not an arbitrary X, and it bears a traditional burden that continues Plato’s
system in Hegel’s system’ (p. 10), and states (p. 11) that ‘The instabilities in both the
ancient and the modern senses of the term “friend,” which are precisely what endow it with
a history, demand an approach that reckons with the transformations within a concept that
has been shown to be in some essential respect continuous’. Thus, a history of ideas about
meaning (like the one by Deely 2001) can be seen as reconstructing a complex network of
translation processes about theories of meaning, from ancient times to the present day.
11 For a popular introduction to this body of research, see Denworth (2020), cf. also Seyfarth
and Cheney (2012), Brent et al. (2014). Scholars from the humanities are often wary
about the evidence needed to infer real friendship (excluding simpler tit-for-tat strategies)
in non-human animals, and judge it ‘very difficult to extract which mechanism is actually
underwriting the observed pattern of reciprocity’ in apes (Hruschka 2010: 210). This is
contrasted with human friends’ ‘relative insensitivity to past behaviour and future payoffs’
when helping a friend; a pattern which is seen as ‘puzzling from an evolutionary perspective
that emphasizes survival of the fittest’ (Hruschka 2010: 29).
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 189

12 For an extensive survey of the literature, see Hruschka (2010), who also drew on a database
on peasant and small-scale societies around the world, to find four friendship characteristics
surviving comparisons with the many characteristics of friendship in modern industrialized
societies: mutual aid, need-based helping, positive affect and gift-giving among partners.
13 One can expect that the existence of urban lifestyles and strong institutions affect the
private/public location of friendship and its practices (Österberg 2010). As noted by
Henrich (2020: 22), urban, industrialized, educated people ‘show relatively less favouritism
toward our friends, families, co-ethnics, and local communities than other populations do.
We think nepotism is wrong, and fetishize abstract principles over context, practicality,
relationships, and expediency’.
14 This conception is in line with Marais (2019: 57 and Chapter 4).
15 This scaffolding depends also upon the particular styles of reflection for each individual
(Emmeche 2015). For use of Peircean semiotics to analyse the friendship relation, see
Emmeche (2014, 2017). Hofstadter (2007: 354) suggests that ‘the most crucial factor’ for
where to draw the line for applying the word ‘conscious’ is ‘whether or not the entity in
question could be said to have some notion, perhaps only very primitive, of “friend”, a
friend being someone you care about and who cares about you’. I thank Kalevi Kull for
reminding me of Hofstadter’s suggestion.
16 Different ‘turns’ in the humanities may be conceived of as TS translations, whereby a
field or paradigm that imports new theoretical perspectives is translated into a different
paradigm (according to Konstan, ‘classics came to be invaded by anthropology!’; see
him interviewed by Philip Mitsis at NYU Abu Dhabi Institute, 17 October 2012, on the
occasion of the publication of an Arabic translation of Konstan (1997): https://youtu.be/
O3rGjUlFcQY. The anthropological impact on classic studies is visible in Finley (1977) and
Herman (1987), cf. below.
17 Brain (1977) for a comparative anthropological account that emphasizes a variety of forms,
cf. also Hruschka (2010).
18 See James Underhill’s interview, ‘In Conversation with Anna Wierzbicka – How English
Shapes Our Anglo World’ at https://youtu.be/jCw3dfmgP-0
19 See critique in Ramson (2001), reply in Wierzbicka (2001). Using the more recent Google’s
ngram viewer (https://books.google.com/ngrams) on constructions like ‘dear friend’,
‘best friend’, ‘good friend’ and ‘close friend’ only partly confirms Wierzbicka’s claims;
‘close friend’ shows a long but very slow increase in use from 1850, while ‘best friend’
dramatically increased in frequency since 1980 (corpus: googlebooks-eng-20200217).
The same source shows relative constancy of the ‘friend of mine’ construction, in contrast
to what Wierzbicka claimed, but confirms her sense that the ‘my friend’ construction is
decreasing.
20 It can be objected that the assumption that some English simple words are somehow
universally translatable is questionable; for a critique, see Blumczyński (2013). I thank an
anonymous reviewer for raising this point.
21 See https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ungleichzeitigkeit and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
simultaneity.
22 cf. Carrithers (2010), an entry that also draws upon Kumar (1992).
23 This demand for translation is understandable. Especially in non-Western collectivist
(so-called regulated-relational) (cf. Henrich 2020) societies, you don’t trust strangers
190 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

enough to simply voluntarily give away pieces of personal information. You want
mutuality in relations of exchange, as in a gift economy. Science and scholarship can
also be considered as gift economies, as pointed out by sociologists of science Robert K.
Merton and Warren O. Hagström. The scientist gives away a new piece of knowledge to
the scientific community and hopes to get back recognition and merit. The pieces of ‘data’
anthropologists are eager to pick up from their informants are, thus, met by a demand for a
more mutual form of exchange: a kind of recognition that takes the form of friendship.
24 There is little literature on friendship as a method in anthropology (e.g. Tillmann-Healy
2003). Some anthropologists think that friendship is ‘an essential part of the very practice
of ethnography’ (Eva van Roekel, interview at https://medium.com/find-out-why/the-study-
of-friendship-in-anthropology-d957d5583c3c). Anthropologists are, in general, ambivalent
about this, and wary about giving informants material support in exchange for information.
The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) has, to date (year 2020), not
created ethical guidelines on this or other issues; the American Anthropological Association
has a ‘Code of Ethics’ (approved June 1998), which is silent about payment and about
friendship.
25 This is, in fact, an extension of patron-client ties of the ancient world, thus, pointing to
both continuity (regarding the ‘vertical’ power-dimension of unequal friendship types)
and break (regarding its ‘horizontal’ dimension) in the translation of friendship from the
ancient to medieval times. On the situation in medieval Northern Europe, cf. Hermanson’s
illuminative account: ‘The Icelandic chieftains’ subject farmers were tied to their lords
through bonds of friendship. Among intellectuals, the relationship between mentor and
disciple was one of friendship. The same was true in classical Greco-Roman societies
where the vertical ties between patron and clients were described in terms of friendship’
(Hermanson 2019: 140).
26 For further discussion, see Allan Silver’s work, for example Silver (1990, 1997). See also
Hill and McCarthy (2000).
27 For an elaboration, see Meilaender (1981), who points to five contrasts that we can see
as influencing TS: (1) Philia as preferential versus agape as nonpreferential; (2) philia
demands reciprocity, while agape needs to be shown to the enemy from whom no love is
expected to be returned; (3) philia can change, while agape is eternal; (4) philia and ‘civic
friendship’ were noble things in the ancient world, but the modern political bond of justice
must be impartial and impersonal; and (5) philia was preeminent when work had little
personal significance, while agape helped shape a world in which vocation was seen as a
very important form of service to neighbour. The implication, as shown by Grayling (2013:
61–75), is that, though we can look ‘at any Christian website on friendship and see familiar
[reasonable] things being said’, when they are subordinated to the Christian doctrine, this
becomes incoherent and devalued.
28 Österberg (2010: 78).
29 In Ancient Greece, it was a virtue, or moral code in the broadest sense, to help one’s friends
to harm their enemies; see Blundel (1989: 39), who notices that ‘we are less inclined than
the ancient Greeks to divide up our world between friends and enemies’. This idea may
be related to a modern emergence of the figure of a non-dangerous, completely neutral
stranger, cf. Silver (1990, 1997).
30 Since Burns’s assessment, new, important scholarship on friendship in Imperial China has
been published, e.g. Wang (2017), Chu (2017), Kutcher (2000), Vitiello (2000), Huang
(2007a) and Shields (2015).
TRANSLATING FRIENDSHIP ALTERNATIVELY 191

31 There was a distinct concept of friendship in Confucius, namely that friendship is a

‘one-directional relationship in which one extends oneself by association with one
who has attained a higher level of realization’ (Hall and Ames 1994: 91); it was, thus,
a very different idea, not about an equal, but about a more hierarchical relationship
(cf. Kutcher 2000).
32 Ricci became the first European to enter the Forbidden City of Beijing in 1601, upon
invitation by the Wanli Emperor, who sought his services in matters of court astronomy
and calendrical science; in 1602 Ricci created a map of the world written in Chinese
characters. He converted several prominent Chinese officials to Catholicism. He also
worked with the Chinese elites, such as Xu Guangqi, to translate Euclid’s Elements into
Chinese, as well as the Confucian classics into Latin – for the first time in history. On the
role of Ricci’s and other Jesuits’ translations in that Sino-European cultural exchange,
see Hsia (2007). Ricci’s project of winning the hearts and minds of the locals can also be
described as translating their Confucianism into an incomplete but yet close-to-perfect
version of Christian faith, so their eventual conversion would not be a big step. For details,
see Chu (2017), Billings (2009), Hsia (2007) and Wikipedia’s entry on Ricci’s approach to
Chinese culture.
33 In part memorized by him, in part by his access to Sententia et exempla, a sixteenth-century
Latin ‘commonplace book’ by Andreas Eborensis (1498–1573), cf. Billings (2009: 8 and
note 9).
34 As Chu (2017, fn. 10) notes with McDermott (1992), it is Eurocentric to claim that
late Ming discussions of friendship were stimulated and even influenced by Matteo
Ricci’s translation of classical Greek and Latin authors’ observations on the same theme.
Yet, there was huge interest in Ricci’s pamphlet and it became included in the Chinese
collectanea – congshu, i.e. collected editions of books whose inclusion attests to their
canonical status.
35 This ‘larger part’ is also what brings home the message by Burke about translating histories,
namely, ‘the interlingual translation of historians was at the same time a form of cultural
translation, in other words an adaptation to the needs, interests, prejudices and ways of
reading of the target culture, or at least of some groups within it’ (Burke 2007b: 133).
36 According to the ethics of Confucius, one needs to respect the ‘five cardinal human
relationships’ (wulun), that is, those between ruler and minister, between father and son,
between elder and younger brothers, between husband and wife, and, finally, between
friends. Only friendship was (or might have been) seen and practiced as non-hierarchical,
and was traditionally deemed the least essential of the five. After quoting Gu Xiancheng
(1550–1612), a Ming dynasty educator who offers a persuasive argument about the
importance of friendship in the context of wulun, Martin Huang (2007b: 170, note 77)
comments on a ‘substantially’ different translation of the same passages by McDermott
(1992), and states that ‘I do not see in the original text the kind of strong sense of equality
as McDermott has apparently seen. Personally, I believe McDermott has probably made Gu
Xiancheng’s view on friendship more “modern” as well as “Western” than it actually was’.

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196
 CHAPTER TEN

Meaning-making Processes
in Religious Translation
Involving Sacred Space
JACOBUS A. NAUDÉ AND CYNTHIA L. MILLER-NAUDÉ

INTRODUCTION
Sacred space, like its inextricable temporal counterpart sacred time, provides a means for
humans to separate manifestations of the divine (hierophanies) from ordinary (profane)
existence (Eliade 1959; Otto 1959 [1923/1917]). Sacred space – the translation of the
concept of the sacred into spatial reality – is itself the translation of cultural worldviews
of cosmic geography, cosmology and cosmogony. The concrete realities of local shrines
and centralized temples are architectural translations of divine transcendence, as well as
translations of the manifestation of divine transcendence to those who enter. Sacred texts
bear both an emergent and a symbiotic relationship to sacred space: Conceptions of the
divine as embodied in sacred texts are translated into sacred spaces, but sacred spaces also
shape conceptions of the sacred and its translation into holy writ.
Sacred texts and their translations are usually seen in isolation as instantiations
of purely interlingual translation, without any consideration that the processes of
religious experience in interaction with the reality that brought them about can also
be processes of translation. Similarly, the processes that map religious knowledge to
spatial reality are not ordinarily viewed as processes of translation. This linguistic
bias in translation studies was promoted by Jakobson (1959), who defined translation
as different kinds of interpretation of verbal signs, namely intralingual, interlingual
and intersemiotic translation. Marais (2019: 17) points out a limitation of Jakobson’s
definition, namely, that all three categories relate to verbal signs – he defines even
intersemiotic translation as relating to the translation of verbal signs into non-verbal
signs – with the result that intersemiotic translation does not include translation
between two different non-verbal sign systems. Working within the framework of
Peircean semiotics, Marais (2019, especially 14–16) proposes that a semiotic approach
to translation must account not only for lingual signs but also for all instances of
translation (even cases of translation that do not include language at all). Marais’s
proposal allows us to see all the complex, interrelated processes that are involved
in the mapping of sacred space – physically, conceptually, socially – as processes of
198 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

translation in the sense that they involve the semiotic transfer of meaning within – as
opposed to across – the sign system of a religious belief system. Furthermore, just
as sacred texts can be interlingually translated into new linguistic and cultural
contexts, sacred space can be semiotically translated across both cultural and religious
boundaries. Marais’s proposal also has implications for religious translation and the
meaning-making semiotic processes in religion, where language and translation are
seen to play a central role not only in the practice of religion (Sawyer 1999) but also
in the academic study of religion (DeJonge and Tietz 2016).
The goal of this chapter is to avoid the fragmentation of religious translation that
results from a focus solely on interlingual translation by including other processes
of alternative translation holistically in order to enhance our understanding of the
meaning-making processes of religious translation. Translating sacred space will
be examined in this chapter as an example of alternative religious translation. In
contrast to the traditional definition of translation, which has led to reductionism in
understanding religious translation, viewing religious translation as extending beyond
interlingual translation expands the scope of religious translation in significant ways.
We will deal with the processes of translating sacred space by describing the linking
of sacred space to the conceptual reality that brought about the idea of sacred space,
as well as the mapping of this knowledge to new realities and texts, as instances of
translation. The translation of sacred space depends on the nature of the religious
tradition with respect to oral and written traditions; we can broadly categorize
religious traditions into three groups (see Naudé and Miller-Naudé 2018 and Naudé
2021), and give an indication of their global population (as indicated by Pew Research
Center Forum 2012):

●● Religions with dominant written traditions, namely, the monotheistic religions:

the Jewish religion (0.2%), Christianity (32%) and Islam (23%);
●● Religions with dominant oral traditions (6%), namely, African traditional
religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Pacific
indigenous religions;
●● Religions with oral traditions and foundational religious texts, namely,
the Hindu religion (15%), the Buddhist religion (7%), and others (0.8%),
namely, Baha’i, Jain, Sikh, Shinto, Taoist, Tenrikyo, Wicca and Zoroastrian
religions.

Throughout the chapter, representative examples of sacred space will be examined

from selected religious traditions within these three categories, taking into account their
prominence.
This chapter is organized as follows: The first section describes nascent attempts to
broaden religious translation beyond interlingual translation, which provide new insight
into translation processes and phenomena in religion. In this regard, we deal with the
role of orality, the contribution of multimodal communication and the complex nature
of religious knowledge. The second section deals with the processes of translating sacred
space beyond interlingual translation, by describing the linking of sacred space in texts to
the conceptual reality that brought the idea of sacred space about, as well as the mapping
of this knowledge to new realities and texts, as instances of translation. The final section
presents the conclusions.
MEANING-MAKING PROCESSES IN RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION 199

RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION BEYOND

INTERLINGUAL TRANSLATION
Rediscovery of the roles of orality and multimodality in religious translation
Religious translation is routinely viewed and treated as written, interlingual translation,
as indicated above. However, in recent times, there has been a move beyond interlingual
translation (Naudé 2010). The first step towards viewing religious translation as more
than written, interlingual translation was the rediscovery of the roles of orality and
multimodality in religious translation. Religious texts were historically composed by way
of both oral tradition and scribal activity; these cannot be absolutely separated (Carr 2005,
2011; De Vries 2012; Naudé and Miller-Naudé 2016). Furthermore, the earliest written
translations of the Hebrew Bible, the Aramaic Targums, which originated in the first century
BCE, were initially oral Aramaic renderings performed as consecutive interpretations
of oral liturgical readings of the Hebrew text (Flesher and Chilton 2011: 4, 6). Since
the invention of printing, religious texts have been perceived of and handled as printed
artefacts intended for silent reading. Recent technological developments in media culture
led to the rediscovery of the role of orality in the realization of religious texts (Fowler
2009; Littau 2011). Therefore, there is a move to shift interlingual translation away from
the medium of modern print culture to accommodate also oral and scribal culture as a
frame to translate and interpret religious texts, such as the Bible (Rhoads 2012).
The interrelationships among the oral, the written and the visual throughout history can
be conceptualized as follows (Makutoane et al. 2015). Hearing-dominant culture refers to
oral/aural-written communication or verbal interpretive culture and consists of (1) oral/
aural communication and (2) handwritten manuscript communication. Text-dominant
culture refers to print communication or typographic interpretive culture, as well as
electronic/media communication or digital-media interpretive culture. In the electronic
age, many aspects of ancient orality have re-emerged; this new media environment
has been described as ‘electronically aided orality’ (Fowler 2009: 14). The visual has
not supplanted words, but it becomes more prominent as a contextual supplement to
words. It is important to note that what is depicted in this media history are dominant
modalities of communication. Handwritten manuscripts, for example, while they are
characteristic of the hearing-dominant period, are still found in the modern world in
some religious traditions (e.g. handwritten scrolls of the Hebrew Bible are used within
Jewish liturgical contexts and handwritten codices of the Qurʾān are used within Islām).
Furthermore, the oral plays a role in every stage: in the cultural and aesthetic practices of
pre-modern traditions, in modernist representations of the past and in audiovisual media
and postmodernist expressions of artistry (Bandia 2011: 108).
This expansion of translation beyond interlingual translation provides new insights
for translation processes and phenomena in religion. Recently, developments in
multimodal communication have contributed to the intersemiotic translation of the Bible
by means of nonverbal sign systems (see the overview in Soukup and Hodgson 1997);
for example through movement and dance (Keen 1997), the performance of installation
art involving sacred shrines (González 1997), film (Loader 1997), music (Werner 1997)
and multimedia images (Goethals 1997). Many instances of multimodal translation of
the biblical text are not new; for example, musical chant was an integral component
of oral liturgical renditions of the biblical text in Jewish settings (Werner 1997), and
artwork from medieval times provided an intersemiotic translation of Christian sacred
texts (Hornik 2018).
200 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Multimodal communication is also present in other religious traditions. Although

Muslims reject interlingual translation of the Qurʾān, non-interlingual translations have
historically been, and still are, encouraged. Those who have assimilated its teachings so that
its meanings are reflected through their thoughts, words and deeds are said to represent
an effective translation of the Qurʾān (Lumbard 2015). Similarly, for followers of the
Hindu and Buddhist religions, the emphasis is on the living word, which still inspires the
discipline of memorizing the original oral transmission, which is entrusted to specialists.
The guru (a personal teacher who is concerned with social and spiritual enlightenment) is
the means whereby the tradition is conveyed through the generations, and teachings are
authenticated. A Buddhist priest teaches as much by the body (appearance, movements
and ethical conduct) as by words – both are the expression of the enlightened mind
(Bowker 1997: 179). The teaching provides a therapeutic analysis of suffering and self-
enlightenment, by demonstrating the quality of the perfectly free mind, and is not about
information of reality (Bowker 1997: 179). These contexts are usually not typified as
translating, although they all describe meaning-making semiotic processes in which
incipient signs are translated into subsequent, more developed signs.
Religious experience in interaction with the reality that brought about sacred texts
and their translations, and the processes that map religious knowledge to reality – both
processes of translation – are often seen in isolation from interlingual translation.
The following terms are used to indicate the action in this regard: render, represent,
mediate, interpret, transfer, manifest, reproduce, repeat, incarnate, reveal, transform,
transmute, cosmicize, rationalize, moralize, consecrate, sacrilize, desacrilize, symbolize.
These processes of alternative translation, together with interlingual translation, must be
considered holistically (as a translation complex) in order to make the meaning-making
process in religious translation coherent. Previous studies on these alternative processes
fall into three types. The first type already operates with the idea of translating non-lingual
incipient signs into more developed non-lingual subsequent signs as normal translation,
for example, the case study of Kasdorf (2009) on architectural translation of sacred space,
to which we return below. A second type claims that a wider or metaphorical use of
the term ‘translation’ is utilized similar to interlingual translation, for example, Mark
Smith (2010, 2016) on the ‘translatability’ (sic) (Smith 2010: x) of deities, which refers
to the way deities of various cultures were identified, recognized or appropriated across
cultural boundaries. Similarly, Cohn (1981: 4) states, in his work on sacred space in
the Bible, ‘Biblical writers certainly “borrowed” literary formulas, images, and symbols
from the surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures and “translated” them into biblical
language.’ A third type operates with terms related to the act of translating, but does not
recognize that the process of translation is involved. For example, the religious scholars
Rudolf Otto (1959[1923/1917]) and Mircea Eliade (1959) use terms such as ‘render’ and
‘manifest’ to describe the translation of one physical reality into another physical reality
(see also Frankfort et al. 1946: 14).

The complex nature of religious translation knowledge

Marais (2019) deals with the issue of fragmentation within translation studies caused
by translation ‘turns’ (i.e. the paradigm shifts of translation studies) and argues for
considering translation as a complex and emergent phenomenon. He (Marais 2014: 34)
furthermore challenges the reductionist paradigm by proposing complexity thinking, not
to replace reductionism but to supplement it. D’hulst and Gambier (2018), similarly,
break with the tradition of viewing the history of translation through the reductive lenses
MEANING-MAKING PROCESSES IN RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION 201

of schools, theories, ‘turns’ or interdisciplinary exchanges, by identifying seven processes

for establishing translation knowledge – generating, mapping, internationalizing,
historicizing, analysing, disseminating and applying knowledge. Instead of the focus
being on the fragmentation of knowledge, they argue that it must be on the progress of
knowledge by its growth or accumulation. For example, interlingual translation is both
process and phenomenon, and it is semiotic in nature; these characteristics make it a
complex, emergent phenomenon (Marais 2019).
Against this background, the focus in the next section is on translating sacred space
beyond interlingual translation by linking sacred space in texts to the physical reality that
brought about the idea of sacred space, as well as the mapping of this knowledge to new
realities and texts (Naudé 2018). As indicated previously, these processes must be viewed
from at least two viewpoints: first, as the actual processes in the emergence of a particular
religion, and second, the scientific description and explanation of these processes in the
emergence of religion.

TRANSLATING SACRED SPACE

Semiotics of space
On the basis of Lefebvre (1991[1974]), space can be understood as divided into three
categories (see also Schreiner 2016). The first is physical space, or space as empirical and
material. The second is mental space, or conceived space. The third is social space, or
lived space. Harvey (1990), similarly, divides space into three categories: material spatial
practice, representations of space and spaces of representation; these correspond to the
division of Soja (1996) into Firstspace, Secondspace and Thirdspace. Space is, thus, ‘not
objective or passive, but an active force that is knowledge and action’ (Berquist 1996: 15).
Drawing on Määttänen (2007), these distinctions of space can be understood
semiotically with reference to Peirce (contrast the somewhat different material semiotics
approach of Padoan 2021). The sign (or, representamen) ‘is something that stands to
somebody for something in some respect or capacity’, the object is what the sign stands
for and the interpretant is ‘an equivalent sign or perhaps a more developed sign’ that is
created in the mind of the person (Peirce 1955: 99). Määttänen (2007: 454–5) argues
that the sign and the object are related by perception, the object and the interpretant are
related by action or habit, and the sign and the interpretant are related by interpretation.
In this view, all three types of space can be accommodated, with social space being
‘ultimately interpreted by different kinds of habits and practices that are somehow related
to those places’ (Määttänen 2007: 455); in other words, social space is the interpretant
of the object that takes place by action, practice or habit. In this way, ‘(s)patial practice is,
then, essentially embodied practice’ (Määttänen 2007: 457).

TRANSLATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE

SACRED INTO SPATIAL REALITY
Emergence of the representation of the sacred
The issue of how to translate divinity to or for humanity is present from the earliest times.
It is caused, especially, by the general view that knowledge is limited to the phenomenal
world and, on that account, it is impossible beyond ordinary experience in space and time.
Accordingly, the divine is represented (or translated) as fantasy or illusion. For example,
202 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) claims in his emphatic psychoanalytical exploration of

religion that the universe is all that exists, an accident that just happened. Freud’s advice
to humans is that they must face the harsh reality that they are alone in the universe (Freud
1961[1928]: 41–2, 47–53, 58–9, 67–9). The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
represents (or translates) the divinity as an abstract notion, the ‘starry heavens above’,
that is, an intelligence beyond the universe (Nicholi 2003: 36–7) and, as a religious moral
idea in humans, ‘the moral law within’ (Kant 1952[1788]: 360). In these examples the
non-rational is wholly excluded by the rational in the idea of the divine by one-sided
rationalistic interpretation and representation (or translation).
An enquiry by Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) into the non-rational factor (e.g. the
miraculous) in the idea of the divine (the holy) and its relation to the rational (i.e. concepts
that can be analysed intellectually) brings a shift of focus towards coherent thought
in the representation (or translation) of the modalities of religious experience (Otto
1959[1923/1917]: 15–18, 73–4). For Otto, the term ‘the holy’ is at the ‘real innermost core’
a ‘category of interpretation and valuation peculiar to the sphere of religion’, which ‘sets it
apart from “the rational”’, but which is ‘applied by transference to another sphere – that
of ethics’ in the Kantian meaning of an ‘absolute moral attribute’ rendered as ‘completely
good’ – ‘a mistranslation and unwarranted “rationalization” or “moralisation” of the
term’ and its corresponding terms in Hebrew (qādôš), Greek (hagios) and Latin (sanctus)
(Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 19–20, 65–73). To find a word to incorporate the meaning
of ‘holy’ beyond the meaning of goodness, Otto (1959[1923/1917]: 21) coins the term
‘numinous’ (Latin numen) ‘to keep the meaning clearly apart and distinct’ and which is
‘irreducible to any other’ as a ‘unique “numinous” category of value and of a definitely
“numinous” state of mind’. The numinous is experienced as objective and outside the
self (Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 25). Another element in the numinous is the religious
experience of a self-confessed feeling of dependence, which Otto (1959[1923/1917]:
24) calls creature-consciousness or creature-feeling. In this regard, humans sense their
nothingness: They feel that they are creatures, submerged and overwhelmed to that
which is supreme above all creatures (Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 24).
Otto (1959[1923/1917]: 26) names the object to which the numinous consciousness is
directed ‘mysterium tremendum’. One of its aspects is the adjective ‘tremendum’, which
is similar to the Hebrew hiqdîš (‘to hallow, mark off by a feeling of peculiar dread’) and
the parallel expressions for this feeling such as ʾēmāh of Yahweh (‘fear of the LORD’,
e.g. Exod. 23:27), which represents the element of religious awe or awefulness (Otto
1959[1923/1917]: 27–33). Otto (1959[1923/1917]: 34–7) adds a further element to
‘tremendum’, namely, that of absolute superiority in power or majesty (‘tremenda majestas’).
The third element is called ‘energy’ or ‘urgency’ of the numinous object perceptible in
‘wrath’, ‘living’, ‘passion’, ‘temper’, ‘will’, ‘force’ and so on, to demarcate the divine nature
from the view of the philosophers as only an idea (Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 37–9). These
three elements of tremendum cause a numinous experience that is non-rational and creates
a feeling of terror/fear (Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 26–39). The other aspect of ‘mysterium
tremendum’ concerns the substantive idea ‘mysterium’, which conveys the qualitative
content of the numinous experience, namely ‘the element of daunting “awefulness” and
“majesty”’ as well as what is uniquely attractive and fascinating and in which fascinating
mystery is experienced (Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 45–53). The fascinating mystery
concerns a numinous experience that is totally different (not human and not cosmic),
because the divine is expressed as the wholly other (‘ganz andere’), which fills the mind
with blank wonder and astonishment (Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 39–44). From the former
MEANING-MAKING PROCESSES IN RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION 203

comes the sense of divine wrath and judgement, from the latter, experiences of grace and
divine love. This dual impact of the daunting and the fascinating was Otto’s characteristic
way of expressing the encounter of humans with the holy (Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 45).
The ideas and concepts (love, mercy, pity, comfort, etc.) are the parallels or schemata
on the rational side of the non-rational aspect (fascination) (Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 45,
60–4). Note that Otto (1959[1923/1917]: 33, 38, 40, 74) typifies non-rational aspects,
like ‘mysterium’, with the notion ‘ideogram’, which is a graphic symbol representing the
concept or idea rather than the sounds of a word. As an analogical notion taken from the
natural sphere, an ideogram illustrates the real meaning, but it is incapable of exhaustively
rendering it. Otto 1959[1923/1917]: 41) claims that rationalization of religion ends in a
developed system or in a completely worked-out theory and interpretation by which the
fundamental fact of religious experience is eliminated.

Emergence of the representation of sacred space

Following Otto, Mircea Eliade (1959: 10) points out that the sacred as a reality of a wholly
different order can only be represented (or, translated) by means of terms borrowed from
the world of natural experience of humans. Compared to Otto, Eliade (1959: 10) adopts
a different perspective, by presenting the sacred in all its complexity: not only in so far
as it is irrational and not in terms of the dichotomy between rational versus non-rational
elements but also the sacred in its entirety.
Eliade (1959: 10–11, 20–4) defines the sacred as the opposite of the profane and
proposes the term ‘hierophany’ to designate the act of manifestation (or translation)
of sacred realities in objects that are an integral part of the natural profane world, for
example, a stone or a tree, or a supreme hierophany (e.g. in Christianity, the incarnation
of God in Jesus Christ). Note that ‘hierophany’ is associated with the manifestation
of the sacred, which includes the more restrictive concept ‘theophany’, which is the
manifestation of a god. From the profane point of view, a sacred tree or stone remains a
tree or stone; nothing distinguishes them from all other trees or stones (Eliade 1959: 12).
The sacred stone or tree is also not venerated as a tree or stone by those to whom a tree
or stone reveals itself as a hierophany that shows the sacred, the totally different; instead,
the immediate reality is transmuted (or translated) into a supernatural reality, equivalent
to a power and saturated with being (Eliade 1959: 12). Where the sacred manifests
(translates) itself in space, the world comes into existence (Eliade 1959: 21). The world
is ontologically founded by the sacred and the entire cosmos can become (be translated
into) a hierophany that is consequently sacred (Eliade 1959: 12, 21, 63). Hence, the
manifestation of the sacred in space has a cosmological valence.
For those who have a religious experience (as was prevalent in ancient societies), sacred
space implies a hierophany that results in detaching a territory from the surrounding
formless expanse and making it qualitatively different from other homogeneous and
neutral space (Eliade 1959: 24–9). In the infinite expanse where there is no orientation,
the eruption of the sacred or hierophany reveals an absolute fixed point, the centre (‘in
the middle’ or ‘navel of the earth’), where the cosmos came into existence and from
where it spread out in all directions. The centre provides orientation in the chaos of
homogeneity and makes possible ontological passage from one mode of being to another
(Eliade 1959: 21–3). The threshold (and door) of a sacred space (e.g. the door of a church
or temple) is the limit, boundary or frontier that distinguishes the sacred and profane,
but is also the means of continuity in space, the paradoxical place of communication and
204 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

passage between the profane and the sacred (Eliade 1959: 24–5). The centre also creates
the passage through which communication is established between the three cosmic
levels, that is, netherworld, earth (mundane) and heaven (transmundane), referred to as
‘axis mundi’ or ‘imago mundi’. The centre is the formative principle of countries, cities,
temples, palaces and human dwellings to be closest to the god(s) (Eliade 1959: 37, 65).
Hierophanies give structure and orientation to the world of religious humans by
establishing a sacred order to which they conform themselves – the cosmos, which is an
inhabited and organized (‘cosmicized’) territory (Eliade 1959: 29). The space outside their
world or cosmos, which is peopled by ghosts and demons, is viewed by religious humans
as chaotic space that is uninhabitable (Eliade 1959: 29–32, 34). By settling in it and giving
it structure by clearing uncultivated ground, humans symbolically transform (translate)
it into a cosmos through a ritual repetition of the primordial act – the transformation
(translation) of chaos into cosmos by the divine act of creation, which is equivalent to
consecrating it (Eliade 1959: 31, 34). Similarly, the Vedic ritual for taking possession
of a territory by the erection of an altar is a reproduction on a microcosmic scale of the
creation – the water and clay/stones that form the altar symbolize the primordial water
and earth respectively (Eliade 1959: 30–1). Cosmicization as repetition of the cosmogony
is always a consecration (Eliade 1959: 32).
The desire of religious humans is to participate in the sacrilized reality, to be saturated
with power; therefore, the tendency is to live as much as possible in close proximity to
consecrated objects, that is, to the sacred space, which has implications for the consecration
of human life and habitation by the encumbering of taboos (Eliade 1959: 12–14). As an
example of ‘sacred space’ that demands a certain response from humans, Eliade (1959:
20) gives the story of Moses taking off his shoes before Yahweh’s manifestation in a
burning bush (Exod. 3.5).
The experience of nonreligious humans (as prevalent in modern societies) is reflected
in the tendency of desacrilizing the cosmos to be profane (Eliade 1959: 13–15). In
contrast to sacred space, Eliade (1959: 22–3) claims that profane space is homogeneous
and neutral and gives humans no pattern for their behaviour. However, Eliade (1959:
23–4) claims that even the most desacrilized existence preserves traces of a religious
valorization of the world, with the result that privileged places are qualitatively different
from others; for example, a birthplace may still retain an exceptional and unique quality.
To summarize, sacred space is where heaven and earth meet. Sacred space – the
translation of the concept of the sacred into spatial reality – provides a means for humans
to separate manifestations of the divine (hierophanies) from ordinary (profane) existence.
As it is itself the translation of cultural worldviews of cosmic geography, cosmology
and cosmogony, the next section will show how the concrete realities of local shrines
and centralized temples are both architectural translations of divine transcendence and
translations of the manifestation of divine transcendence to those who enter.

Architectural Translations of Sacred Space

For Eliade (1959: 15), it is useless to discuss the structure of sacred space without
showing how such a space is constructed and why it becomes qualitatively different
from the profane space that surrounds it. The process of architectural translation of
sacred space is as follows: The construction of an architectural structure is a cosmogonic
repetition of the creation of the world. The architectural structure as reconstructed world
symbolizes the centre of the world, which proclaims and integrates the components of
MEANING-MAKING PROCESSES IN RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION 205

that world. The architectural structure, assimilated to the centre, is a point of junction
of communication and passage that is sacred transformation, between heaven, earth, and
netherworld (Knipe 1988: 108).
According to Eliade (1959: 45–7), an architectural structure representing sacred
space has the cosmogony as paradigmatic model, which means that a new construction
reproduces (spatially translates) the creation and repeats the cosmogonic act. Eliade
(1959: 52, 54–6) discusses two of the ways of homologizing architectural structure
to the cosmos. First, the structure assimilates to the cosmos by the projection of the
four horizons from a central point – the roof symbolizes the dome of the sky, the floor
represents earth and the four walls project the four cardinal directions of cosmic space
from a central point (the navel) (Eliade 1959: 46–7, 52). The architectural structure,
therefore, spatially translates the cosmogony and represents the world. Second, repetition
of the cosmogonic act occurs through a ritual of construction of the paradigmatic acts of
the gods by virtue of which the world was born from the body of a marine dragon or of
a primordial giant. It involves a symbolic imitation of the primordial sacrifice that gave
birth to the world, by which the architectural structure is animated; that is, it receives
life and a soul through a blood sacrifice. To summarize, the architectural structure is
sanctified by either a cosmological symbolism or by ritual so that it becomes the universe
that humans construct for themselves by imitating the paradigmatic creation of the gods,
the cosmogony (Eliade 1959: 55–6). It is a new beginning and new life, and repeats the
primordial beginning. The habitual action of the ritual within the structure semiotically
creates the meaning within the space.
The terms of architectural structures and their translations for representing
sacred space are varied, for example, altars, shrines, high places, ‘where the gods
are’, sanctuaries, tabernacles and temples. In contemporary Jewish religion, this
space is translated as ‘synagogue’; in Christianity as ‘church’, ‘basilica’, ‘cathedral’
or ‘tabernacle’; and in Islām as ‘mosque’. The phenomenon of a mysterious space
containing structures, symbols and devotees is usually translated for convenience sake
as ‘temple’, which is derived from the Latin templum (Haran 1985: 13–15). In this
sense, the term ‘temple’ is used for structures in the ancient world (e.g. Sumer, Israel,
Greece and Mesoamerica), and in areas in which ancient temple traditions continue
today (e.g. India and Japan) (Knipe 1988: 106). It is also the case of the building
erected by Solomon in Jerusalem, known in Hebrew as ‘the House of the Lord’ (bêt
YHWH), which was conceived as the dwelling place of the divine. Haran (1981: 31–3)
makes a categorical distinction between the temple and the altar, which is, at least, valid
for the ancient Near East. Structurally, the temple was a closed structure with a roof,
whereas an altar was found only in the open. Functionally, the temple was considered
to be a dwelling place equipped with furnishings and accessories symbolizing the
divine presence, while the altar was intended only for sacrifices. Every temple would
be accompanied by an altar and functionaries, but not every altar would necessarily
be attached to a temple and, furthermore, it could be served by anyone. According
to Knipe (1988: 106), the temple as a sacred space exists as a functional physical
structure of mundane construction materials, sometimes in ruins or as a reconstruction,
or sometimes in memory with its complexity, guises and range of meanings as a cultural
experience in some human societies.
Eliade (1959: 58) interprets the temple as the earthly reproduction of a transcendent
model, a copy (translation) of a celestial work of architecture. The creation myths were
translated into the architectural space of ancient temples, which were designed to be
206 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

models of the cosmos and which were viewed as the hub of the cosmos (Walton 2011).
The three levels of the cosmos represented within the creation myths were translated
spatially into three areas of temples – the outer court, the inner court and the inner
sanctum (holy of holies) (Walton 2011: 88–9). In treating the symbolism of the temple
in Jerusalem, the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus wrote that the court
represented the sea (i.e. the lower regions), the holy place represented earth and the holy
of holies represented heaven (Ant. Jud. 111, 7, 7) (Eliade 1959: 42–3).
According to Stiebing (2009: 134), the floor level in a typical ancient Egyptian temple
gradually rose from the entrance to the holy of holies. The highest spot represented
(translated) the mound of creation that first rose above the waters – every temple was
conceptualized as the place where the world first emerged and became the very image
(translation) of the organized cosmos, in other words, a microcosm. Most temples had
the following features: an open court, a roofed columned hall and a holy of holies. The
columns, decorated with papyrus, palm and lotus plants, translate the plants of the
primeval marsh; they support a roof that was decorated to represent the sky. As one
moved from the open court into the hall, then to the holy of holies, the rooms became
increasingly darker, leaving the shrine of the deity in primordial darkness. Thus, each
temple was semiotically a powerful refashioning (or translation) of the world.
Furthermore, temples in the ancient Near East were typically placed upon mountains,
hills or elevated areas, as iconic of the dwelling of the gods on mountains (Keel 1985;
Kang 2008). Even local shrines in ancient Israel are described as ‘high places’ (e.g. 2 Kgs
17.9); archaeologically, a ‘high place’ was often simply an elevated stone platform on
which the altar was placed. Zion as the site of the temple is described in the Hebrew
Bible as a ‘mountain’ (Pss 3.5; 48.2; 99.9), because that is the kind of place where a deity
such as Yahweh should dwell, even though the physical geography of Jerusalem cannot
actually be described as more than a hill.
As a spiritual epicentre, Jerusalem’s esplanade has been regarded as sacred for about
three millennia by Jews, Christians and Muslims (Grabar and Kedar 2009). Created
by the conquerors – Canaanite, Israelite, Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, Babylonian,
Persian, Greek, Roman, Arab, Seljuk, Crusader, Mameluke, Ottoman, British, Jordanian
and Israeli – the different experiences of sacred space are reflected in successions of
architectural translations of the space, as well as in various successions of attitudes, shapes,
myths, symbols and practices that shape the space, or which are shaped by the space itself.
Although there is continuity through time, the space is retranslated as reflected by the
various terms used through the centuries to define the space. For Jews and Christians
(who share the heritage of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament), it is identified as Mount
Moriah, where God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Gen. 22.1-18) (for
Muslims the story relates to Ibrahim’s son Ismā’īl in Mecca [Sūrah al-Ṣaffāt 37:102–110]).
For Jews and Christians, it was also known as Mount Zion in biblical times (not to be
confused with the hill in contemporary Jerusalem referred to by this name, which dates
to Byzantine times). For the Jewish religion it is the holiest space, where the House
of the Lord (bêt YHWH) (tenth century BCE to 586 BCE) of Solomon and the rebuilt
and renovated Temple (bêt hammiqdāš ‘House of the Sanctuary’) (538 BCE to 70 CE)
once stood and where, it is believed, the Temple is to be rebuilt in messianic times. For
Christianity, it is the Temple that Jesus repeatedly visited, foretelling its destruction and
announcing the advent of a new, spiritual worship. As a cursed space (Matt. 23.38, 24.2)
of which the temple-less mountain (70 CE to 638 CE) is evidence, Christians in pre-Islamic
times located their sacred spaces elsewhere in Jerusalem, for example, the Church of the
MEANING-MAKING PROCESSES IN RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION 207

Holy Sepulchre, which houses the traditional site of the tomb of the resurrection, guarded
by Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Roman, Coptic, Syrian and Abyssinian denominations.
The destruction of the temple was not redressed until the Muslim conquest in 638, when
the Mosque of Jerusalem (Masjid Bayt al-Miqdis) (638 CE to 1099 CE), consisting of the
Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque, was erected. It became the third-most-sacred
space for Islām (after Mecca and Medina), as the site to which the Prophet Muhammad
travelled on his mystical night journey and ascension (Grabar and Kedar 2009: 9–13).
After the conquest of Jerusalem by the crusaders, the Dome of the Rock was converted
(retranslated) into a church, namely the Lord’s Temple (Templum Domini) and al-Aqsa
became a church called Salomon’s Palace (Palatium Salomonis) (1099 CE to 1187 CE ).
They were reconverted (retranslated) into sacred spaces for Islām after 1187 CE as the
Furthest Mosque (al-Masjid al-Aqsa) under Ayyubid Rule (1187 CE to 1260 CE), the
Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif) under Mamluk Rule (1260 CE to 1516 CE) and
Haram-i Şerif under Ottoman Rule (1516 to 1917). Muslims consider (translate) the entire
Haram a mosque and prostrate themselves in prayer everywhere upon it. The demise of
the Ottoman Empire led, inter alia, to the arrival of a new Christian authority in the form
of the British Mandate in 1917 and Israeli control over the esplanade after 1967. For
Jews and Israelis, the sacred esplanade becomes (translates into) the Temple Mount (har
habbayit) and the Western/Wailing Wall, whereas for Muslims and Palestinians it stays
Al-Haram al-Sharif. Although it is still contested today, this sacred space contains one of
the most truly international and genuinely ecumenical communities on earth – where Jews,
Christians and Muslims worship at a single site held sacred by all.
A case of architectural translating of sacred space of the mosques of Karīm al-Dīn
(c. 1320 CE) and Khwāja Jahān (c. fourteenth century) in Bijāpur (India) is provided
by Katherine E. Kasdorf (2009: 57–80). Both mosques were constructed from a
combination of reused and new architectural materials and bear a stylistic resemblance
to surviving eleventh- to fourteenth-century (Hindu) temples of the region. The reuse
of architectural materials points towards (indexically translates) an encounter between
local, non-Islamic traditions and newly introduced modalities associated with Islām.
Kasdorf (2009: 59) suggests an attempt on the part of the mosques’ architects to express
a ‘conceptual similitude’ or ‘dynamic continuity’ between two different types of sacred
spaces (non-Islamic and Islamic), to enact a visual (form) and conceptual (meaning)
translation between temple and mosque. Another dimension is added to the mosque of
Karīm al-Dīn’s capacity for translation by the inscriptions it contains in local languages,
as well as languages that are likely to have been relatively new in Bijāpur in 1320 CE
(Kasdorf 2009: 63). The stylistic overlap between the region’s non-Islamic and early
Islamic architecture signals an act of communication or translation between individuals
or groups with very different cultural backgrounds, by visually conveying information
about the mosque to individuals who were familiar with different kinds of sacred space
(Kasdorf 2009: 63, 65–6).
In the mosque’s construction, there is a transfer of architectural form from mandapa – a
hall in a Hindu temple – to a Muslim prayer hall; in its reception by individuals who
were more familiar with Hindu practices than with Islām, there is the visual translation
of a temple space into a mosque space (Kasdorf 2009: 68). In the translation, the aim
was not to find an exact equivalence between temple and mosque but rather to express
one type of sacred space in terms of the other, and to communicate a certain degree of
commonality between the two (Kasdorf 2009: 68). In fourteenth-century Bijāpur, this
architectural translation was expressed not only through pillars and their arrangement
208 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

but also through the central mihrāb, the architectural niche on the wall of a prayer
hall of the mosque, which marks direction oriented to Mecca and where the visual and
conceptual translation is most highly concentrated (Kasdorf 2009: 68). By reusing for its
mihrāb the type of doorframe that would have marked a garbhagrha (the holy of holies),
the most sacred and ritually potent space of a Hindu temple, the mosque of Karīm al-Dīn
translates temple conventions into an Islamic context to signal the sacred space, towards
which worship and prayer are directed (Kasdorf 2009: 71–2). Whereas the doorway
leading into a temple sanctum visually frames the image of the deity, the central mihrāb
of the Mosque of Karīm al-Dīn has framed a lamp, which further reinforces the visual
translation (Kasdorf 2009: 73). The translation of the materials and architectural forms
between temple and mosque invites multiple readings: Muslims who had migrated to
Bijāpur are likely to have seen the prayer hall and mihrāb primarily as the standard parts
of a mosque, whereas residents of Bijāpur who were newer to Islam may have understood
them through the corresponding elements of temples (Kasdorf 2009: 74). The manner
in which reused materials have been incorporated creates bilingual visual clues that mark
the prayer hall as a space for worship and the mihrāb as the focus of worship. Since Islam
was only beginning to take root, the functions of mosque architecture were expressed in
a way that would have been recognizable to Muslims, non-Muslims and new Muslims
(Kasdorf 2009: 75).

Multimodality in translations of sacred space

The sense of divinity is mediated through sacred spaces, as well as through sacred texts
(Smith 2016: 1). Sacred texts bear both an emergent and a symbiotic relationship to
sacred space. Conceptions of the divine as embodied in sacred texts are translated into
sacred spaces, but sacred spaces also shape conceptions of the sacred and its translation
into sacred writings. However, neither sacred space nor sacred text is monolithic in
expression; rather, each is a concept with multimodal expressions. Above, we have
described how the notion of sacred space can be realized as physical space, conceptual
space and social space. We have also described above how sacred texts may have
oral, written or visual manifestations. In this section, we examine the translation (and
retranslation) of sacred space (as physical space, conceptual space and social space) and its
translation from and into sacred texts (whether oral, written or visual). We also consider
the translation of sacred space from one type of modality into another type of modality,
while remaining within a religious-cultural meaning system; such translations could be
described as semiotic intratranslations of sacred space, in that the semiotic system remains
constant but the modality of sacred space varies.
In order to examine the complex interrelationships between sacred text and sacred
space in detail, we use two contrastive examples. The first example involves the sacred
spaces of ancient Israel within the cultural context of the ancient Near East (see Hundley
2013) and their representations and semiotic translations within the Hebrew Bible and
the subsequent sectarian literature of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The second example involves
the rock paintings of the Eland San as sacred text and sacred space. These examples
contrast two ancient religions: one a religion with a dominant written tradition and the
other an African traditional religion with a dominant oral tradition.
The spatial characteristics of the tabernacle, the movable shrine of the Israelites’
wilderness wanderings, are meticulously described in the priestly texts as revealed
by God to Moses on Mount Sinai (Exodus 25–30; 35–40) (Eliade 1959: 60; Jenson
MEANING-MAKING PROCESSES IN RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION 209

1992: 35; Biran 1981). Mount Sinai (or Horeb) is also the location of a (conceptual)
heavenly temple, made not by human but by divine hands as the dwelling place of the
divine, the One of Sinai (Exod. 15.17; Jud. 5.5). The tabernacle (or, tent of meeting) at
the base of the mountain was modelled upon it (Exod. 25.8, 40), so that the one at the
base and the other one at the top were in exact correspondence (Freedman 1981: 21).
After the tabernacle was erected as the tent of meeting at Mount Sinai, it was transported
through the wilderness to the conquered land of Canaan, and was eventually settled in
Shiloh in the form of a more solid structure (Haran 1985: 200). It was from Shiloh that
the sacred cultic object, the ark, was taken to Solomon’s House of the Lord in Jerusalem
(Gese 1984; 1 Sam. 4.3-7; 1, 2 Sam. 6.1-19, 1 Kgs 8.1-9). At a stage, the structure at
Shiloh no longer existed (Ps 78.6, Jud. 18.31). In the textual tradition, there is, thus,
depicted an emergent, partially overlapping translation of sacred space from the divinely
conceptualized tabernacle on Sinai to the physical tabernacle to the Shiloh shrine, and
from the Shiloh shrine to Solomon’s temple.
As depicted in the priestly texts, which were composed much later as the literary
product of circles of the Jerusalemite priesthood of Solomon’s House of the Lord (Haran
1985: 5–6), the tabernacle violates the laws of historical reality, since such a magnificent
building was only feasible during the reign of Solomon as a cedar-roofed exalted house (1
Kgs 8.13). The tabernacle never existed in early Israel in the form described in the biblical
text and must be viewed as conceptual (Haran 1985: 149, 189). The correspondence
between the description of the tabernacle in the priestly texts and the blueprint of
Solomon’s House of the Lord in Jerusalem (1 Kgs 6.2-38, 7.13-51) suggests that the
tabernacle was a utopian projection (translation) into the past of the latter building
(Rowley 1976[1967]: 51, 79). Note that the tabernacle is not an artificial projection
(translation) of a fixed structure; instead, the description of the tabernacle is structurally
adapted (indigenized) to reflect the nomadic or semi-nomadic conditions of the wilderness
wanderings prior to the settlement in Canaan (Haran 1985: 195). Similarly, the priestly
texts do not reflect the Shiloh structure that succeeded the tabernacle in its original, direct
form, but rather the Jerusalemite recasting of Shiloh; that is, the details of Jerusalemite
circumstances were retrojected onto Shiloh (Haran 1985: 202–3).
Solomon’s temple as described in the biblical text is, thus, the result of two translational
acts as also recorded in the biblical text – that of the (conceptual) dwelling of God on Sinai
and of the wilderness tabernacle. At the same time, Solomon’s physical temple served as
the prototype for the retrospective translation in the biblical text of the Sinai temple and
the wilderness tabernacle.
In addition to the tabernacle, Solomon’s House of the Lord in Jerusalem provided
the inspiration for two other literary (conceptual) temples in which its image is reflected.
The first temple, depicted in Ezekiel 40–48, never existed in reality but is an imaginary
construction (Haran 1985: 43). Its plan is translated through reshaping so that it is
excessively schematized for order, and to bring it into line with the requirements of
the priestly school of which Ezekiel was a disciple (Haran 1985: 45). For example, the
courts are square, the gates and chambers are arranged with painstaking symmetry, and
the temple compound is separated from the royal palace and placed far away from the
city. The second is the idealized temple in an eschatological New Jerusalem, known
from the Temple Scroll, a document from the Jewish Qumran community on the shores
of the Dead Sea, which dates to approximately the second century BCE (Wise 1990:
98–9; Yadin 1983, 1:386). In both cases, selected characteristics of Solomon’s temple are
translated into the literary representations of idealized temples.
210 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

The representation and translation of sacred space in ancient Israel involves three
interwoven traditions – the oral traditions lying behind the textual tradition, the textual
tradition itself and the architectural tradition. We understand the religious context of
ancient Israel to exemplify a hearing-dominant culture in which cultural traditions were
internalized and conveyed mainly by word of mouth, while texts were written for archives
and libraries to serve as reference points for memorization and recitation of the tradition.
In other words, in a hearing-dominant culture, such as ancient Israel, writing was known
but documents were written less frequently and for more constrained purposes than in a
text-dominant culture in which orality plays a less prominent role.
Having briefly examined the translation of sacred space in the religious tradition of
ancient Israel, we now consider another religious tradition that is strikingly different in
that it is a religious tradition with a dominant oral tradition. Our example involves an
African traditional religion, namely, that of the Eland San people of southern Africa, who
lived in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, a mountainous area of Lesotho and KwaZulu-
Natal province of South Africa. The Eland San were part of the Southern San, or |Xam,
and became extinct towards the end of the nineteenth century after at least 2,000 years
of habitation. Their predominantly oral culture is known to us primarily through their
magnificent rock paintings found in caves (see the images at http://www.sarada.co.za).
By 1961 the anthropologist Patricia Vinnicombe had found at least 308 painting sites on
the walls of caves in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg mountain range. These sites contain
8,478 paintings, which means an average of 57 per shelter (Vinnicombe 1976: 135;
see http://www.sarada.co.za/#/library/Eland%20San/collections/PJV for the archive of
Vinnicombe’s images). Fifty-three per cent of the paintings are of human figures, 43 per
cent of animals (most prominently the eland; see Vinnicombe 1975) and 4 per cent are
of miscellaneous objects.
Although there is much about the Eland San worldview that cannot be known, it
has become clear that the images in the paintings are not simply art but are part of a
complex semiotic system, which is connected both to their religious thought and to sacred
space. Some evidence for understanding the web of interrelationships connecting the
Eland San myths, cosmological beliefs, geological landscape and rock paintings comes
from ethnographic materials from various groups of the Southern San (the |Xam), of
which the Eland San formed a part, as well as Northern San (such as the Ju|’hoansi,
!Kung and |Gui), who still live in Namibia, Botswana and southeastern Angola; these
materials must be used judiciously since there are differences, as well as connections,
between these groups (see Lewis-Williams 2015). However, the only translation of some
of the Eland San rock paintings by a San individual for whom their production was still
a living tradition comes from !ing (also spelled Qing), a San interpreter, from the end of
the nineteenth century.
In 1873/1874, !ing offered J. M. Orpen an intersemiotic translation of an Eland San
rock painting from the wall of Sehonghong cave in Lesotho (see the images at http://www.
sarada.co.za/#/library/Sehonghong/images/). It is one of only three known rock painting
sites in the whole of southern Africa for which we possess a translation of some of its
images provided by an individual for whom the production of rock art was still a living
tradition. (The others are Melikane, 40 km to the south, and Pitsaneng, 1 km upstream.)
Orpen published an account of !ing’s translation in The Cape Monthly Magazine under
the title ‘A Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen’ (Orpen 1874; see also
Mitchell and Challis 2008). Orpen’s article was read by W. H. Bleek, a linguist who
studied the San language with his sister-in-law, Lucy Lloyd (Bleek and Lloyd 1911). Bleek
MEANING-MAKING PROCESSES IN RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION 211

showed the article with its drawings of the painting to a number of Kalahari (or Gemsbok)
San from Katkop (near Calvinia in the Northern Cape) who lived with him. Orpen’s
record of !ing’s exegesis and the supplemental explanations provided by Bleek’s Katkop
friends remain the most extensive authentic San exegesis of a San painting ever recorded.
(Far less extensive comments from other |Xam San individuals on rock paintings were
recorded by Bleek and Lloyd in 1875 and were recently published by De Prada-Samper
and Hollmann 2017.)
In his lengthy intratranslation that combines the accounts of Orpen and Bleek,
Verryn (1982: 14–17) kept as close to the reported words of !ing and the Katkop San as
grammatically possible (the extract below is from p. 17):

In that painting we see a water thing, or water cow which, in the lower part, is
discovered by a San man behind whom stands a San woman. This San man beckons
to the others to come and help him. Then they charm the animal, and attach a rope
to its nose in the upper part of the picture. They are in the rain. The upper part of
the picture shows that they must use a long rope and lead it over a wide part of the
country. Where it goes the rain will fall. The strokes are rain. Of the San who lead
the water cow, two are rain specialists – the two nearest the cow. The chief of them
is nearest the animal. In their hands are holders made of tortoise shell, containing
blessed buchu [a medicinal plant]. Strings ornamented with beads hang down from
these holders. The two men are preceded by two San women, one of whom wears a
cap. She is painted white for the dance.
The others are people spoilt by the moqoma dance, because their noses bleed.
|kaggen gave us the song of this dance, and told us to dance it, and people would die
from it (probably collapse in a trance) and he would give them medicine to raise them
again. It is a circular dance of men and women, and it is danced all night. Some fall
down: some become as if mad and sick: blood runs from the noses of others whose
medicine is weak, and they eat charm medicine, in which is burnt snake powder.
The water animal … is a very large animal with horns or quills which lives in pools
or rivers. Light flashes from its eyes … There are men who have died who also live
in rivers with the water animal. The rain specialists know them. This dance, and the
leading of the water animal, is usually performed when the wind is from the north.

!ing supplemented his translation with a fuller account of |Xam mythology (summarized
by Verryn 1982: 14–16):

The San had a clear perception of the human predicament of being trapped in a circle
of evil from which … there is no exit. The San experienced this situation in terms of
a deep respect for all life and – in the case of the |Xam – the life of ‘their’ animal,
the eland, in particular. The behavior of the eland, which concentrate in herds during
the rainy season and disperse when food is scarce, was regarded by the San as closely
parallel to their own social customs. The eland’s gestation period is the same as that
of humans. Eland were to San ‘almost human’. The psychological plight of captivity
in evil stemmed from the need to kill eland in order to live – to kill them by using
skills, and good fortune sent by God [|kaggen] – and yet, in so doing, to be harming
themselves as well as their victims, and offending God [|kaggen]. The eland is the
child of the Creator… The blood of the murdered animal was used to create more
animals, including more eland… Eland blood is used in painting. Overpainting and
212 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

repainting are meant to show that the eland lives again, and that reconciliation and
atonement have taken place … |kaggen does not love us if we kill an eland. |kaggen
is with the eland when it dies, and resurrects the animal… The hunter must walk with
a limp. He must fast and mourn for the animal, and be purified. When the animal is
painted |kaggen resurrects it… If an eland is shot, there will be a disastrous results on
the rain. Eland herd together when the rain comes. The rain bull is an eland. If there
is a violent storm, this is from the rain bull. If there is gentle soaking rain, it comes
from his cow.

From !ing’s translation of the images of the Sehonghong paintings, it is possible to glimpse
how the San view of the nature of being, of life and death, their mythology and ritual were
all translated on the cave wall at Sehonghong (Verryn 1982: 18). Subsequent research by
scholars working on many more of the rock paintings has revealed additional insights on
how the images convey meaning, how they were constructed and their relationship to the
construction of meaning-making processes in the religious thought and religious practice
of the Eland San.
Although, at first glance, the images of the rock paintings seem to convey their meaning
through purely iconic signs, both the individual images and their arrangements in the
panels show evidence of indexical and symbolic meanings. For example, images of fish
(or less commonly, crabs) are used to convey ‘underwater experiences’, but these are not
iconic images. Rather, they relate to the lowest of the three cosmological levels recognized
by the San – ‘the subterranean spiritual realm, accessible by means of holes in the ground,
cracks in the rock face and waterholes’, where spirit-beings (such as the rain-animal) lived
‘underwater’ (Lewis-Williams 2010: 7). To be underwater is a metaphor relating to the
trance dance, a ritual activating supernatural potency (Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2008:
428). To enter a deep trance is described by the San as ‘dying’ or as being ‘spoilt’, because
these are passages to the spirit realm (Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2011: 50).
Trans-cosmological experiences are also conveyed by the ‘thread of light’, the image
of a red line fringed with white dots on both sides. Ethnographers have documented San
beliefs about the shining ‘threads of light’ that lead shamans in trance experiences (Lewis-
Williams and Pearce 2011: 50–1). In the rock paintings, images of the ‘threads of light’
are used not only to convey the iconic meaning of the trance experience, but also to relate
images separated by several meters in a kind of ‘syntax’. Furthermore, because the spirit
realm was understood by the San to lie just behind the rock face, itself a kind of ‘veil’, the
threads of light allow the paintings to function as ‘mediators between the material world
and the spirit realm’ in a complex ritual involving altered states of consciousness (Lewis-
Williams and Dowson 1990: 8–9; Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2011: 53).
Unlike Western art, the San rock painters were not creating art but rather, by creating
images, they were ‘performing a ritual that blended the material world of daily life
with the spirit realm’, so that they were ‘painting their way’ into another dimension
as a religious ritual that was ‘comparable to the medicine dance itself’ (Lewis-Williams
and Pearce 2008: 430). Furthermore, the production of the images was considered
to be an ongoing process, with subsequent painters overpainting, repainting and
modifying the images through superpositioning of images, superimposition of images
and juxtapositioning of images. The work of image-making was, thus, collaborative and
unending, just as the rituals that they both enacted and represented were collaborative
and unending. We can, thus, understand the production of the images and their presence
MEANING-MAKING PROCESSES IN RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION 213

on the ‘veil’ of the rock face as both creating and consisting of sacred space. In Peircean
terms, a dicent interpretant ‘is a sign that construes another sign as an index’, a process of
indexical interpretation which has been described as ‘dicentization’ (Ball 2014: 152). The
iconic representations of religious ritual in the rock paintings ‘are meshed with indexical
connectivity’ so that the meaning-making process of the ritual is ‘anchored by its image-
to-connection transformative efficacy’ (Ball 2014: 152–3). The notion of dicentization
provides a semiotic way to conceptualize the viewpoint of the San that the images of their
rock paintings are perceived to be alive and to reflect actual existence. The San paintings
on the rock walls are no less than a sacred writing within a sacred space that recreates
ancient ritual and symbolizes religious beliefs by translating oral rituals and orally
transmitted beliefs into visual icons and symbols and by translating (and transporting) the
San from ordinary existence into the spirit world.

Human experience and sacred space as translation of divine characteristics

Human experience of the divinity is translated (mediated) into space in human form
(anthropomorphism). Sacred spaces, for example, temples, are modelled on human living
spaces, namely, the home and palace. As sacred space, the temple in the ancient Near
East is the venue for the meeting of the divine and humans and the place where they
are engaged in communication based on the model for communication between humans
(Smith 2016: 5). According to Smith (2016: 31–43) temples translate in four specific
ways the characteristics of deities. First, it is the space where deities intersect with humans
to express what they may provide to humans, namely blessing and revelation. Second,
temples recapitulate the divine narrative of cosmic conquest and enthronement to show
how they act for humans. Third, temples participate in the divine features of power,
eternity and holiness to convey the contrast of deities to humans. Fourth, temples as
beautiful monumental structures translate the size and attractiveness of deities.
The sacred space of the temple translated divine characteristics to humans, which
were in contradiction to human experience (Smith 2016: 44). First, humans experience
powerlessness and suffering; the temple was massive and durable, just as the deity
embodied strength and size. The exaggerated size and attractiveness of the deity and the
temple involves reciprocal social and political power. Second, humans experience lack
of prosperity and infertility; the temple displays blessing and beauty, just as the deity
channels prosperity and fertility. The human community, in return, offers sacrifices. Third,
humans experience mortality; the temple conveys duration, just as the deity is eternal. To
conclude, each of these characteristics of the temple involves an iconic translation of the
transcendent deity for human understanding by means of the architectural characteristics
of sacred space.
Other aspects of the temple involve translation of the character of the deity for humans
in symbolic ways. First, humans experience disorder and unintelligibility in the world;
the temple is the source of divine revelation of the wisdom and knowledge of the deity.
Second, humans experience the self as both wrong (sinning) and whole (holy); the temple
as the residence of the holy deity is the locus where the transition from sinfulness to
cleanness and holiness can take place. These relate to the temple as a social space and to
the rituals and liturgies in the temple, which create meaning within its structures.
The sacred space of the temple, thus, translates characteristics of the deity to humans,
allowing humans to reciprocally translate their experience to the divine sphere.
214 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

CONCLUSION
We have seen that the translation of sacred space involves complex meaning-making
processes. Sacred space as the translation of the concept of the sacred into spatial reality
depends upon the translation of cultural and religious worldviews concerning cosmic
geography, cosmology and cosmogony, which are imprinted on sacred space and shape its
features and meaning. In the same way that the concept of divine transcendence involves
a separation from the mundane and profane, so sacred space (like sacred time) involves a
separation from other tokens of spatiality – the spatiality of the sacred reflects iconically
the features by which divine transcendence is differentiated from ordinary existence.
The concept of divine transcendence may, thus, serve both as a translational incipient
or source for the concrete realities of local shrines and temples, and as a translational
subsequent or target for the manifestation of divine transcendence to those who enter or
contemplate sacred space.
In religions with a written tradition of sacred texts, the translation of sacred space
bears a symbiotic relationship to sacred text – how divine transcendence is manifested
within holy writ has a bearing upon how sacred spaces can appropriately serve as
incipient or subsequent within a translational process, while, at the same time, sacred
spaces may influence conceptions of the sacred and its embodiment in holy writ on the
basis of the perceptions and activities of the religious community that engages the divine
in sacred space. In religions without a written tradition of sacred texts, especially religions
that operate entirely with oral myths and rituals, the translation of sacred space depends
upon a living memory or a written (even if profane) description of the conceptions of
the divine and the meaning-making religious processes involving sacred space and the
spoken oral texts. In the same way that the translation of sacred space cannot be confined
to interlingual translation, the meaningful translation of sacred space – and indeed our
understanding of the meaning and functioning of sacred space – is very difficult apart from
either a living tradition or a written tradition for explicitation. The complex, interwoven
relationships between sacred space and sacred text, whether written text or remembered
text, and the fluidity of semiotic processes moving between instantiations of sacred spaces
and sacred texts, both within and across cultural-religious worldviews, suggest both the
potency of translation processes beyond translation studies and the human yearning for a
localized hierophany of divine transcendence.

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 CHAPTER ELEVEN

Translation between
Non-humans and Humans
XANY JANSEN VAN VUUREN

INTRODUCTION
This chapter explores the expansion of translation studies to incorporate not only
linguistic and non-linguistic processes of translation but also human and non-human
translators. In particular, it entails an exploration into how interspecies translation occurs
by means of the translation of species-specific Umwelten.1
Recent shifts in multiple disciplines have led to questions being asked about the
historically dominant centralizing of humans, and subsequent marginalizing of non-
humans, in ecology. This shift is partly a result of new findings in relation to cognitive
ethology, as well as an increased awareness of the welfare and agency of non-human
animals. For example, the cross-disciplinary acceptance of the ‘animal turn’ in humanities
and sciences (Swart 2010a; Kalof and Montgomery 2011; Andersson Cederholm et al.
2014) and shifts towards contemporary fields of study, such as ecolinguistics (Stibbe
2015), posthumanism (Wolfe 2010; Braidottti 2013; Roelvink and Zolkos 2015) and
ecofeminism (Buckingham 2004; Adams 2010), amongst many others have brought
about novel ways to think and speak about human/non-human relations.
Similarly, the fields of semiotics (Deely 1990; Sebeok 1990; Kull 1998a; Lindström
et al. 2011; Tønnessen 2011; Maran and Kull 2014) and translation studies (Marais and
Kull 2016; Cronin 2017; Marais 2019) have expanded their interest in semiosic and
translational processes beyond the human-centred approach. Considering this expansion,
the chapter explores the benefit of having an ecosemiotic theory as underpinning for
analysing translational processes. In particular this study will explore the interaction, and,
by extension, interpreting and translation, between humans and non-humans by referring
to human and equine Umwelten and their subsequent functional cycles in a particular
ecology. The ecology used as foundation for this study is a bi-weekly cart-horse welfare
outreach clinic in Thaba-Nchu, South Africa, organized by Blind Love Association, a
local equestrian-focused nonprofit organization. This clinic invites cart-horse owners to
bring their horses for free medical assessment and care and vaccinations, and provides
affordable food. Welfare workers, veterinarians, horse owners, horses and community
members from diverse cultural and socio-economic backgrounds need to communicate
with one another verbally and non-verbally at such events, and, as a result, both verbal
and non-verbal translational processes take place.
220 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

Therefore, by taking for granted that all semiosis entails translation (Marais 2019),
this chapter regards the semiosic processes that occur during interaction between humans
and non-humans in this particular ecology as processes of translation, by giving equal
consideration to the translational processes that occur during verbal and non-verbal
interpreting at these cart-horse clinics.
After a brief introduction to the complexity of horse-human relationships in South
Africa, I discuss translation and semiosis as corresponding processes, after which
I introduce the reader to concepts of ecology and ecosemiotics and the importance of
species-specific Umwelten in human/non-human interactions. The final section discusses
welfare workers’ attempts to translate between horse and human Umwelten.

THE COMPLEXITY OF HORSE-HUMAN

RELATIONSHIPS IN SOUTH AFRICA
While not as ‘economically important as cattle, … ecologically damaging as sheep, …
[or] familiar as dogs or cats in the domestic sphere’ (Swart 2010a), horses have played a
substantial role in human history. Horses started off being providers of energy, food and
transportation and, since their arrival in southern Africa more than three centuries ago,
they have contributed to the functioning of human society in numerous sociopolitical
and economic ways (Swart 2010a; 2010b). They have since become less commonplace in
contemporary urban settings, but their roles in society are still ubiquitous in multiple (and
vastly diverse) contexts. Examples include lucrative horseracing and equestrian sports
industries, as well as the routine use of horses for tillage and transport in more rural areas
of South Africa. Horses form part of both the formal economy (in terms of professional
horse racing, horse breeding and horse slaughter) and the informal economy (in terms of
transport, use in agriculture, informal racing and also slaughter). The roles that horses can
play in horse-human relationships are therefore immense.
This chapter’s focus on cart-horses that take part in a clinic programme is partly due
to the complexity of the relationship between humans and horses in such contexts. For
instance, horses are means of transport (and, by extension, a means of income) for their
owners, while many welfare volunteers regard horses as providing a pastime: horse-riding
is a hobby, not a necessity. During the outreach clinics, welfare workers, volunteers,
community members and horse owners all bring with them different ideas about horse
ownership, which have a significant impact on horse/human relationships. This enables
a discussion of the translation between Umwelten and the function of welfare work as a
form of intersemiotic translation.

SEMIOSIS AS TRANSLATION AND THE SIGNIFICANCE

OF THE NON-HUMAN
Thomas Sebeok contends that where there is semiosis, there is life, by stating that ‘[s]
emiosis is the biological capacity itself that underlies the production and comprehension
of signs, from physiological signs to those that reveal a highly complex symbolism’ (2001).
If we take into consideration that translation is semiosis, Sebeok’s statement implies that
where there is life (and not merely human life), there is translation. In other words,
translation extends beyond linguistic semiosis. In fact, the process of semiosis (and, thus,
of translation) ‘must [therefore] be recognised as a pervasive fact of nature as well as of
culture’ (Sebeok 1977).
TRANSLATION BETWEEN NON-HUMANS AND HUMANS 221

Moreover, the past decade alone has seen a significant shift to referring to translation
and semiosis as corresponding processes (Petrilli 2015; 2016; Marais and Kull 2016;
Cronin 2017; Marais 2019). Susan Petrilli, for instance, suggests that ‘[t]he question of
translation cannot be limited to the question of the relation among different historical-
natural languages’ (2016), and that translation ultimately involves the process of semiosis.
If something is a sign, it is because it can be translated (Petrilli 2016: 23). In an earlier
publication, Petrilli (2011) explains that a sign is a sign due to its otherness; because it
always becomes an other in semiosis. In an attempt to explain how translation can enable
an understanding of not only the human other but also the non-human other, Marais
conceptualized a biosemiotic theory of translation within which he likewise argues that
translation is ultimately semiosis (2019), and that translation ‘underlies all semiotic
processes equally’ (2019: 52). The implication of this statement is, then, that both
humans and non-humans participate in translational processes. This theory introduces
the undeniable substance of the non-human to translation processes. Including animals
in studying translation, Marais argues, could broaden our views of animals, since the
aim of translation (and interpreting, by extension) is ultimately to mediate difference
and understand the other. Marais argues that ‘[i]n a post-humanist paradigm of thinking,
where humans are no longer regarded as the center of either the universe or earth,
it is crucial that a theory of translation is able to explain, not only human semiosis,
but also non-human semiosis’ (2019: 49). His theory, then, not only emphasizes the
importance of the human and non-human as others in terms of meaning-making but also
contributes to the increasingly growing field of inter-species translation studies, since
this theory proposes that, ‘apart from Tom, Dick and Harry, Fido and Puss in Boots
also communicate, but so do bacteria, cells, plants and all animals’ (Marais 2021: 102).
The notion of the other is relevant not merely for translation on an individual level but
on the level of translation of knowledge as well. For instance, from an ecotranslational
perspective, Cronin explains that human/non-human connectedness is made possible
through translation, where ‘[t]he human is inconceivable without the non-human other’
(Cronin 2017: 71). Cronin’s view of translation, in this instance, is that of reintroducing
the agency of the non-human as a way of understanding human impact on the non-
human. One of the key contributions that an expanded approach to translation studies
is able to make, then, is that of understanding not only the individual other but also the
non-human other as a whole field of knowledge that needs translation.
Several other scholars have addressed human/non-human relations within the broader
fields of translation studies, indicating that a growing understanding of the non-verbal
and non-human agents and actors within translation processes could enable the study
of translational processes to engage with and explore beyond that which is familiar
(i.e. human language). Such fields of study include ecologically oriented approaches
to interpreting and translation in fields of biotranslation (Kull and Torop 2011),
ecotranslation (Cronin 2017), biosemiotics (Kull et al. 2008; Marais and Kull 2016) and
ecosemiotics (Maran 2020), which have provided insight into human-animal and animal-
animal communication and translation.
Parallel to these fields, there has been a gradual increase in interest in translation
between humans and non-humans outside of translation studies. Temple Grandin
(Grandin and Johnson 2005), for instance, draws on the fields of biology and psychology
to account for translation between humans and animals. She approaches animal behaviour,
and the translation thereof, through her autism, and argues that autistic people have
specific skills and experiences that enable them to understand non-human animals better
222 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

and, therefore, able to translate the animal’s point of view. Her idea of the translator is
not one of a neutral conveyer of a message but rather as partner in the communication
process. The translator is there to help the animal, in order for humans to understand
animal behaviour better.
Conversely, an animal can act as a translator by utilizing the animal’s unique
perception systems for the benefit of the human. There are many examples that can be
mentioned here, from bomb-sniffing rats who locate landmines, dogs that can sniff out
specific cancers, to the relationship of a seeing-eye dog and its human. Their relationships
‘rel[y] on the perception, cognition and communicative abilities of a non-human being’
on behalf of a human being (Magnus 2016: 268).
In his book on ecotranslation, Michael Cronin (2017) discusses the translational
processes involving animals, amongst other processes and agents, from within the
framework of the Anthropocene. In the Anthropocene, in which the impact of humans
on the ecology is regarded as that of a geological force, the purpose of translation,
he argues, is ultimately an ecological responsibility towards the environment. Through
translation from the non-human into something human-like, or at the very least, into
human consciousness, humans will be able to understand the non-human, Cronin
argues. However, the way in which the non-human ecology is translated by the human
for the human currently is problematic, as the actual concern for the non-human entities
in the ecology is not being translated. In the section in Cronin’s book on animals in
translation, he provides a thorough background and discussion of the studies that
have proved that animal communication and consequently animal cognition take place
and ‘are vital to the functioning and survival of a multiplicity of species’ (2017: 76).
When referring to what the role of translation and translational exploration within the
broader human/non-human context could be, Cronin names three relevant elements
that require attention: the rehabilitation of the animal subject, engaging difference and
cross-species agency.
Regarding the rehabilitation of the animal subject, Cronin indicates that the
mobilization of translation is needed to construct a notion of animal subjectivity. He
argues that ‘the exploration of different forms of animal communication must be
accounted an urgent task in terms of according other sentient beings not only the dignity
of just or equal treatment, but of developing a sense of post-anthropocentric relatedness’
(Cronin 2017: 77). Therefore, animals need to be reconsidered as subjects, as opposed
to the objects they have become, and in terms of animal welfare work, such as these cart-
horse clinics, one of the purposes of the clinics should be to attempt to re-establish this
subjectivity.
Through engaging difference, Cronin argues that if translation is not approached
thoughtfully, it might intensify oppression of non-human animals. An example he uses
is the anthropomorphism of fictional animal characters, such as Peppa Pig, Minnie and
Mickey Mouse, and Winnie the Pooh. While the intention was probably to create some
form of familiarity with the subject, it removes the ‘animalness’ from the animal. Or, in
other words, the animal agency of the animal. Carol Adams approaches a similar topic
from the point of ecofeminism in her book on the sexual politics of meat. She talks of the
sexualization of animals and the products that they become (Adams 2010).
The importance of inter-species translational ethics is encompassed in Cronin’s
discussion of the third element: that of cross-species agency (2017: 83), in particular,
with regard to the human contribution to ecological destructiveness, alongside which
TRANSLATION BETWEEN NON-HUMANS AND HUMANS 223

the agricultural revolution led to domestication of a number of so-called agricultural or

working animals that have to supply ‘food …, raw materials (skins and wool), and muscle
power or energy’ (Cronin 2017: 84). In the case of energy, the domestication of draught
animals, such as cart horses, has had their ‘social ties and natural instincts’ (p. 84) broken
and movement limited. Cronin refers specifically to the use of bridles, whips, prods and
other tools to remove the animal agency of the animal. And here we can also refer to the
use of the words ‘breaking in a horse’ (by using some of these tools) as an example of
what he is saying.
The experiences of humans with non-humans in terms of the relationships (or non-
relationships) we build with non-humans and the ecology are, thus, based on processes
of translation or mis-translation, we could argue. In welfare, then, the role of welfare
workers is to align the animal’s Umwelt with the human’s Umwelt by closing this
communication gap.

ECOLOGY, ECOSEMIOTICS AND THE UMWELT

The term “ecology” was first coined by Ernst Haeckel (1866: 286), who defines it as
‘science of the relations between the organism and the environmental outer world’, while,
almost a hundred years later, Vogel and Angermann (1977) describe ecology as ‘the study
of the interrelations between organisms and their environment’ – a description widely
used to this day. Broadly speaking, then, the notion of ecology emphasizes relationships
and interactions between the inner world and the outer world. It, furthermore, takes into
consideration that humans are part of the ecosystem and can never be removed from it
(Kull 1998b), therefore, moving away from the dualistic human/nature divide.
Yet, ecological knowledge on its own ‘is incapable of meeting the environmental
issues of contemporary culture’ (Kull 1998b: 346). Without a semiotic knowledge of
ecology, and particularly an ecosemiotic knowledge, such limitations will remain in
place. An ecosemiotic approach to ecology, therefore, creates a meaningful foundation
for the study of the multitude of translational processes that take place in a particular
ecology, since exploring the semiotic nature of ecosystems allows us to explore the ‘vast
semiotic realm that surrounds human culture’ (Maran 2020: 2), to which humans can
relate through human cultural processes and everyday activities. Additionally, Maran
continues, such an approach also enables us to understand that so-called ecological
problems ‘often have semiotic causes’ (p. 2). A drought, for instance, is more than a mere
absence of rain, but rather caused by overpopulation and excessive farming practices,
and subsequent ignorance of natural semiotic indicators of imminent drought, amongst
other factors.
Ecosemiotics is a branch of semiotics that developed in the early 1990s to explore
‘semiosic or sign-mediated aspects of ecology’ (Maran 2020: 1). It explores the relations
between human culture and the environment (Maran 2018), and also considers human
attitudes towards animals from a semiotic perspective, since ‘it is connected with cultural
codes and practices, symbols and connotative meanings’ (Mäekivi and Maran 2016).
Ecosemiotics is, furthermore, often linked to the study of the human in the Anthropocene,
and in particular to the impact of humans on the environment (Clements 2016) by
extending the range of the sign as a central concept from human culture to non-humans
and the ecology (Maran 2020: 1). The role of ecosemiotics in a particular study would be
224 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

to ‘connect, mediate, and translate different sign systems and structural levels of semiotic
systems in culture-nature relations’ (Maran 2007: 279).
Over and above their interdependence, both fields share some similarities. Both
highlight the importance of studying systems ‘and distinctions, influences, interrelations
and equilibriums in [such systems]’ (Maran 2007). Moreover, both are disciplines of
relation and relatedness, a trait that is regarded as fundamentally important for both
fields. With ecology, the relationships between organisms and their environment are
studied, while in semiotics, the ‘classical concept of sign itself expresses a certain type of
relation’ (Maran 2007).
Ultimately, an ecosemiotic study of translational processes regards human and non-
human sign systems in a particular ecology as equally significant. In this way, the involvement
of the ‘human’ allows for an understanding of how the environment is determined by
models that have developed in a particular human culture and cultural history, while the
involvement of the ‘non-human’ is because ‘the orientation of organisms in pre-human
life equally involves environmental semiosis’ (Nöth 2001). The sign processes all take
place in a shared ecology, of which the ‘[t]he collective whole forms an interlocking
network of irreducibly semiotic relations, many of which are physical as well as objective,
[while others] are purely objective in specifically diverse patterns’ (Deely 1990).
Based on the earlier discussion of sign processes as translation, an ecosemiotic
approach to translation in a particular ecology would imply that the latter consists of a
variety of translational processes that are continuously and simultaneously taking place
between and within all the participants. Such an approach would, thus, make it possible to
observe and analyse multi-species translation. In the case of the outreach clinic involved
in this study, observation of interactions between humans and non-humans found that
translational processes occur continuously between humans and humans, non-humans
and non-humans, as well as humans and non-humans. For instance, one of the most
prevalent instances of translation occurred when welfare workers translated the effect
of specific symptoms to horse owners. An example is the intersemiotic translation of
pain. Horses in pain would react to (in particular) human touch and general presence
with hostility and restlessness – behaviour that many horse owners misinterpreted as
obstinance and stubbornness. The owners reacted by reprimanding the horses verbally
or physically, particularly by means of jerking the harnesses or tightening the reins. The
translation of these actions by welfare workers as expressions of pain, rather than mere
obstinance, resulted in immediate better welfare for the horses, as well as better horse-
human relationships.
The premise of the Umwelt theory holds that all organisms in an ecology are subjects
and not objects of said ecology, and, furthermore, that they experience the world based
on their own species-specific biological modelling devices (such as their senses). This
results in each subject creating its own subjective experiential world through the process
of semiosis. An Umwelt is, as Kull summarizes it, ‘the semiotic world of [an] organism …,
uniting all the semiotic processes of an organism into a whole’ (Kull 1998a). It is the
subjective, meaningful world of any particular species of organisms, and animals are
actively semiotically involved in (and creating) the ecology in which they find themselves.
The Umwelt theory, furthermore, implies that an organism can physiologically only relate
to and observe the things in its immediate environment that would influence its survival
and functioning in a particular environment.
Ecosemiotically speaking, a significant part of the relationship between an organism
and its environment lies ‘in the properties and patterns of the environment – what
TRANSLATION BETWEEN NON-HUMANS AND HUMANS 225

resources and perceptually accessible qualities the given environment provides to which
the animal can relate’ (Maran 2020: 6). While the same ecology is often shared by a
variety of species, and subsequently potentially provides ‘support, shelter, food, nesting
place, …, [this] same environment can afford different things to different species’
(Maran 2020: 6) due to the difference in individual Umwelten. The fact that humans
have created ecologies where species would otherwise not have interacted means that
the communication between these organisms is often mistranslated, since the different
‘sensory receptors possessed by different species of animals means that some forms of
communication are available to them that are not available to other species’ (Cronin
2017: 81). This means that translation is needed for the different species to understand
one another, or, at the very least, for humans to understand the non-humans that they
bring into their shared space.
As active and selective participants within a particular ecology, organisms interpret
their environments through a process known as a functional cycle. The concept of
the functional cycle was initially coined by biologist Jakob von Uexküll to account for
the process through which all species of organisms interact with and construct their
environments by means of their own sign processes. More specifically, the functional
cycle is the mechanism of Umwelt-building (Kull 2001). It is the essence of the ‘bond
between an organism and its corresponding Umwelt’ (Clements 2016), and refers to the
‘whole of discrete and combined sensory and action processes’ (Kull 2010) that form the
functional world of the organism. Relationality is of particular substance in the functional
cycle, in which ‘the relation between a living being and an outer environmental object
[consists] of two complementary processes – perception and effect’ (Maran et al. 2016).
These processes are constantly put to work through each living being’s meaning-making
activity, during which perception, interpretation and consequent feedback takes place.
Understanding the process of the functional cycle enables continuous analyses ‘of the
different relations that animals have with the objects in their environments, with other
animals of the same or different species, and between animals and humans’ (Maran et al.
2016). In the cart-horse ecology, this would imply that humans and horses are constantly
analysing and making sense of each other and their environment based on their perceptual
cues. Each environment (or ecology), according to Von Uexküll, forms ‘a self-enclosed
unit, which is governed in all its parts by its meaning for the subject’ (2010: 144), in
which constant and continuous meaning-making processes take place on various levels.
In the cart-horse outreach clinic ecology, this would include (amongst other elements)
visual, tactile and auditory perception by all organisms. Generally, the functional cycles
that are the most prevalent and important are those of medium, nourishment, enemy
and sex (Von Uexküll 2010). While this would be the case in more natural ecologies, the
functional cycles of the organisms in this particular outreach clinic ecology that facilitate
human/non-human relations (which could possibly be linked to nourishment, partners
and enemy) are more prevalent.
Particularly significant here is that the concept of the functional cycle ‘allows for
analyses of the different relations that animals have with the objects in their environments,
with other animals of the same or different species, and between animals and humans’
(Von Uexküll 2010: 144). In this regard, Von Uexküll refers to a particular quality of
an object in a particular environment. For instance, a book has a ‘reading quality’, and a
knife has a ‘slicing quality’. However, these qualities are imparted by particular subjects
on a particular object. A dog, therefore, would not impart a reading quality on a book,
or a slicing quality on a knife, but rather a possible ‘chewing quality’ on the book, and
226 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

‘pain quality’ on the knife. These qualities have, therefore, been assigned meanings by the
interpreters of these artefacts through a translational process.
To explain what is meant by this, Von Uexküll (2010: 143) uses an example of a flower
in a meadow, which, in its physical structure, is the same, but differs in its meaning to
various organisms. In other words, particular qualities are imparted by various organisms:

For a girl who is picking flowers, the flower is regarded as an ornament.

For an ant, part of the flower is a ladder to get to the petals.
For a cicada-larva, the stem serves as a nest.
For a cow, the flower serves as fodder.

The role of the meaning carrier (in this case the flower) changes to suit each meaning
utilizer. The properties are different, while the structure stays the same. Part of their
properties, according to Von Uexküll, serve the subject as perception cue carriers, and
another as effector cue carriers. For the girl, the colour of the flower serves as perception
cue carrier, and the taste (and probably, smell) of the flower serves as the perception cue
carrier for the cow. The effector cue carrier terminates the perception cue carrier. Once
the flower has been picked, it becomes an ornament, or eaten, it becomes fodder. The
term “functional cycle” is descriptive of the process, ‘[s]ince every action [that connects
the carrier of the meaning with the subject] begins with the production of a perception
mark and ends with the impression of an effect mark on the same carrier of meaning’
(Von Uexküll 2010: 145), thus, creating a cycle. Since the outreach clinic is not a natural
ecology but created by humans, various qualities are imposed on various participants.
While in a natural ecology a horse would have a ‘nourishment quality’ for a predator, it
has a range of possible qualities in the outreach clinic setting. For one human it could be
‘load bearing’ quality, a ‘speed’ quality and, eventually, possibly, ‘nourishment’ quality,
while for another it could be a ’pet’ quality, or ‘recreational’ quality.
In an approach to observing human/animal interaction and consequent translation
between Umwelten within the framework of studying human representations of animals,
‘we should also be aware that our perception and understanding of animals is biased by
our own Umwelt structure’ (Maran et al. 2016: 14), and that ‘[m]any features, forms of
communication, modalities and, indeed, even entire species are often underrepresented
since they are not present in our Umwelten’ (Maran et al. 2016: 14). Translation between
Umwelten could, thus, assist in recognizing the possibility of exploring the Umwelten of
other organisms removed from humans’ own Umwelten. In animal welfare, for instance, a
welfare worker facilitating the translation of Umwelten between humans and non-humans
(in this case, horses) could significantly improve the living conditions, and possibly even
the survival rate, of a particular non-human.

TRANSLATING HORSE/HUMAN UMWELTEN

There is a significant difference between the ‘kind of semiotic understanding of signs
that humans share with other animals, and the typical hermeneutic interpretative
understanding of meanings that is typical for humans’ (Drenthen 2016: 113). Drenthen
explains that, while non-human animals understand and model the world in terms of the
relation of their senses to their environment and, thus, communicate by ‘exchanging signs
that represent aspects of their relationship to their environment’, human communication
and understanding of the environment transcend this instrumental relationship (Drenthen
TRANSLATION BETWEEN NON-HUMANS AND HUMANS 227

2016: 113–14). Rather than mere representation, he states, humans are able to present
a world and change their Umwelt into a world that they could inhabit and respond to.
One reason for this could be that, in contrast to non-human animals, humans are aware
of their Umwelten as Umwelten. That is to say that while ‘animals communicate and are
aware of their surroundings, [they are not aware] of their surroundings as surroundings,
[or] their Umwelt as an Umwelt’ (Bains 2001). Furthermore, humans can, due to an
alternate form of modelling, experience multiple worlds (Petrilli 2016). Building on
earlier work by Kull (2010) and Sebeok (1990; 1991), Petrilli discusses the process of
semiosis that takes place on two levels in any living species: semiosis for modelling (in
other words, the semiosis that takes place for the species to internally understand the
environment); and semiosis for communication, based on a particular species-given
Umwelt. Thus, Petrilli argues, modelling and communication are two different types of
semiosis, but both are essentially translation processes.
This implies that the human Umwelt has placed us in an unusual position where, in
instances where humans are unable to physically adapt to, or function optimally within,
an environment, we see the advantage of utilizing the capabilities of other species to
do so. For instance, by taking a historical look at one contribution (amongst many) of
horses to human development, the use of horses as means of transport prior to the use
of cars enabled humans to traverse vast ranges in short amounts of time. Horses, thus,
inadvertently changed the human ‘experience of speed and the meaning of distance’
(Swart 2010b: 245). Similarly, cart-horses in Thaba Nchu are acquired for their ability
to pull heavy loads at relative speed. Therefore, since humans are aware (to a certain
extent) of other species’ Umwelten (while not particularly referring to it by this name)
and consequent physical abilities, humans are able to exploit other species in order to
function and strive in a particular environment.
Nevertheless, there are palpable constraints in horse and human biological Umwelten,
which do not necessarily overlap to the extent that humans think they do. Ecologically,
a horse is traditionally an herbivorous prey animal. As a result, their Umwelt would be
focused on avoiding predators and finding grazing. Based on their need to survive attacks
by predators, their strongest senses are their sense of smell, hearing and, to a lesser extent,
sight. Where humans have a very superficial olfactory ability, horses are able to smell a
wide variety of experiences, including emotions, sexuality, enemies and places (Swart
2010b). Their ‘nasal vision’, as Swart refers to it, enables them to see not only ‘through
space but also time’ (Swart 2010b: 256), since olfactory information remains behind
after the source of the information is no longer in the vicinity (Saslow 2002: 213). The
importance of certain qualities of olfactory information also differs for the sexes, as well
as for gelded and non-gelded horses. Communication with a horse at these outreach
clinics often started with allowing the horse to smell the human’s hand. Horses eagerly
engaged with this initiation of interaction from humans by sniffing the hands and visibly
relaxing, thereby enabling physical assessments of the horse’s health to continue with
few problems.
This action, of allowing the horse to sniff a human hand, is also indirectly linked to
the understanding of the eyesight of the horse, which is substantially different from that
of humans: horses’ vision has primarily evolved, as with other prey animals, more ‘for
detection of predator approach from any angle than for accurate visual identification of
stationary objects’ (Saslow 2002: 209). It is, therefore, generally accepted that horses
primarily rely on other senses to make sense of their immediate environment. In horse-
human relations, such as instances where a horse is pulling a cart or being ridden, the horse
228 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

(due to its eyesight being poorly adapted to the environment) is very much dependent
on the translation of the immediate environment by humans (through their visual acuity)
through means of reins, voice, touch and even whips. In the Thaba Nchu cart-horse
context, horses are often donned with eye-blinkers (also referred to as blinders) to restrict
a horse’s vision and to limit distractions while the horse is pulling a cart. However, horses
that regularly move around in urban settings (such as the cart-horses of Thaba Nchu)
become accustomed to the movement around them. The blinkers, therefore, merely
restrict the already restricted eyesight even further. Welfare workers at the clinic have
made concerted efforts to explain this to horse owners, with mixed results. The reasons
for their failure to persuade the owners are probably due to a mistranslation between
Umwelten; as with most primates, humans rely ‘very heavily on our excellent high-acuity
daytime vision for distance information, object recognition, sexual attraction, kin/friend
identification, and non-verbal communication of emotion’ (Saslow 2002: 212), and are
often unaware that other mammals (such as horses) have completely different eyesight.

CONCLUSION
Given the current post-human, post-Anthropocentric era, an alternative approach
to translation and interpreting is not only necessary but also a reality. Accordingly,
approaching and analysing ecologies within the framework of an ecosemiotic theory
allows for an understanding of these ecologies as the sum of various Umwelten that
interact in them. Doing so, in turn, allows for an understanding of the translational
processes that flow between various species in a particular ecology. Settings, like the cart-
horse clinic outreach ecology, should ultimately be understood as a sum of (in this case,
human and horse) Umwelten, and the consequent translation between organisms that
these settings afford. An ecosemiotic framework allows for the exploration of theories
such as the Umwelt theory. It is through the Umwelt theory, then, that the need for
interspecies translation in such settings can be understood and approached, since the
subjective experience of the outreach clinic of the horse is not the same as the subjective
experience of the human.
Furthermore, an ecosemiotic approach to understanding the translational processes in
a particular ecology would imply both translational processes between the organisms and
their interaction with the ecology are being translated.
Lastly, such an approach to studying interpreting and translation processes can also
enable us to question how human and animal cultural aspects impact the translation
processes (of both human and non-human participants) within a particular ecology.
In other words, how the human and non-human Umwelten create the constraints and
affordances that allow for translation to take place.

NOTE
1 An Umwelt refers to the species specific, subjective experiential world that all organisms
physiologically relate to and observe.

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 CHAPTER TWELVE

Translation in Intermedial
Studies
JOÃO QUEIROZ, ANA PAULA VITORIO AND
ANA LUIZA FERNANDES

THE PROBLEM
Since Roman Jakobson (1959) defined intersemiotic translation, it has been approached
from several perspectives and theoretical frames. In interarts and in intermediality
studies, intersemiotic translation is described as medial transposition or as intermedial
reference, as proposed by Irina Rajewsky (2005), who has developed several categories
to describe intermedial phenomena. For Claus Clüver (2006), intersemiotic translation
is transformation and adaptation. According to Werner Wolf (2002), it can be described
as not only sub-classes of extracompositional intermediality, such as transmediality and
intermedial transposition, but also as intracompositional processes, such as intermedial
references. Lars Elleström (2010, 2013, 2019) and also John Bateman (2019) have
more recently preferred the terms ‘transmediation’ and ‘representation’ to describe the
phenomenon of transmediality. João Queiroz and colleagues approach intersemiotic
translation as a ‘sign in action’ and a cognitive artefact, based on Peirce’s theory of
mind as semiosis. There are, however, several problems with such terminological and
conceptual variability. Although there are many connections between these concepts, a
preliminary topography of the relationships is still quite obscure. We do not even know if
we are dealing with a terminological dispute that has many methodological and epistemic
implications, or if the problem is trickier, and we are dealing with different phenomena.
Additionally, the concepts overlap in many ways, producing remarkable confusion.
What we will do in this chapter can be considered a basic step in the direction of
developing a map of relationships between different concepts concerning intersemiotic
translation in intermediality studies. We introduce some fundamental notions of the
mentioned authors and try to establish certain relationships between them.

INTRODUCTION
Our idea here is to approach the phenomenon of translation from within the broader field
of intermediality studies. Therefore, before starting, it is necessary to define the area, even
if very introductorily. There are several, and divergent, definitions for ‘intermediality’,
232 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

both as a phenomenon and as a field of research. We present just a few here to contextualize
the problem. According to Clüver (2007: 9), intermediality is a ‘somewhat recent term
for a phenomenon that can be found in all cultures and periods, both in everyday life
and in every cultural activity we call “art”. As a concept, “termediality” comprehends
all types of interrelationship and interaction between media’. Concerning a field of
research, Rajewsky (2005: 44) emphasizes that, ‘from its beginnings, “intermediality”
has served as an umbrella-term’, thereby gathering studies and analyses of media and of
the relationships between them. As a phenomenon, it has various definitions, depending
on the subareas and research aims. Rajewsky (in Ghirardi et al. 2020: 13) is among the
authors who observe that ‘studies in inter- and trans-mediality, mediation, remediation,
and adaptation, just to name a few examples, have in common the interest in studying
different media and their relation to new forms of creation of meaning in contemporary
societies’. On the other hand, in relation to understanding that intermedial relations can
be found in all forms of communication, Elleström (2019) states that intermediality, or
intermedial studies, should not be understood as any research on intermedial relations
but rather as a field designed to disentangle the complexity of intermedial relations.
Approaching intermediality from an historical viewpoint, Müller argues that the ‘term
intermediality leads us back to the game of “being in-between” – a game that compares
various values and/or parameters. It takes us to the material and ideal differences
between the persons and objects represented – the materiality of media’ (2010a: 18).
Although this author also proposes a general categorization of intermedial phenomena,
one of his important contributions to the field is his ability to identify a problem that
still remains unsolved. Müller points out that ‘one of the crucial questions – if not the
crucial question – of any study of media encounters or of intermediality is the question
of how to conceive of a ‘medium’(2010b: 237). For Müller, the basis of intermediality
studies still requires an adequate concept of media that is capable of connecting several
approaches – oscillating between (neo)formalist, post-structuralist, sociological, aesthetic,
discursive, and historical foundations (Müller 2010a: 17). Although we do not delve into
the problem of defining the medium in this chapter, we agree with Müller when he states
that ‘a semiological and functional concept of media, relating media to socio-cultural and
historical processes, still seems to be the most helpful framing for any sort of intermedial
research’ (2010b: 238). Since the field does not yet provide us with a fully established
definition for medium, in this chapter we address the problem and approach translation
phenomena only under the conditions the authors covered in the following sections.

IRINA RAJEWSKY – TRANSMEDIALITY, TRANSPOSITION

AND INTERMEDIAL REFERENCE
Rajewsky is one of the main scholars to submit the terminology and conceptual variability
to a robust theoretical structure. Initially, she was interested in understanding the
heterogeneity of the most narrow approaches and conceptions of intermediality, and
she identified three fundamental distinctions guiding them: (1) Synchronic perspectives,
‘which develop a typology of specific forms of intermediality’ (Rajewsky 2005: 46); (2)
diachronic perspectives, ‘of an intermedial history of media’ (Rajewsky 2005: 46), for
example those ‘taken up by media historians whose work focuses on the intersections
of different media with one another’ (Rajewsky 2005: 46); and (3) phenomena analysed
per se (e.g. film adaptations, ekphrasis or ‘musicalization of literature’). Within this
TRANSLATION IN INTERMEDIAL STUDIES 233

panorama, Rajewsky describes her own work as an effort to introduce ‘narrowly defined
subcategories of intermediality’ (2005: 49–50), even when it comes to a broad range of
phenomena and a wide variety of intermedial qualities. Following historicity criteria,
Rajewsky (2005) elaborates on classificatory types of intermediality, and pays attention
to synchronic level. This combination interests us, especially because there are, among the
categories she developed, those that refer to translation processes between media.
Rajewsky considers that media settings focus ‘on concrete medial configurations
and their specific intermedial qualities’, and that ‘[t]hese qualities vary from one group
of phenomena to another and therefore call for different, narrower conceptions of
intermediality (2005: 51). She discerns groups of intermedial phenomena that address
the notion of ‘crossing of borders between media’ (Rajewsky 2005: 50).

If the use of intermediality as a category for the description and analysis of particular
phenomena is to be productive, we should therefore distinguish groups of phenomena,
each of which exhibits a distinct intermedial quality and – what is even more important
in the present context – a particular way of crossing media borders. This allows for
drawing distinctions between individual subcategories of intermediality and for
developing a uniform theory for each of them.
(Rajewsky 2010: 55)

Of the three subcategories she develops, two directly interest us: medial transposition
and intermedial reference. Medial transposition is the ‘genetic’ process of transforming
a composed text into another medium according to the material possibilities and the
current conventions of this new medium. In these cases, the ‘original’ text (a short story,
a film, a painting, etc.) is the source of the new text in the other media – considered the
target text. Rajewsky describes this process as ‘obligatorily intermediated’ (2005: 51).
The concept of media transformation applies to the process called adaptation, usually
for a multimedia system (cinema novel, opera play, ballet fairy tale, etc.), where the new
text preserves elements of the source text (excerpts from the dialogue, characters, plot,
situations, point of view, etc.). She observes that, in this case,

the intermedial quality has to do with the way in which a media product comes into
being, i.e., with the transformation of a given media product (a text, a film, etc.) or of
its substratum into another medium. This category is a production-oriented, ‘genetic’
conception of intermediality; the ‘original’ text, film, etc. is the ‘source’ of the newly
formed media product, whose formation is based on a media-specific and obligatory
inter-medial transformation process.
(Rajewsky 2005: 51)

This case of ‘intermedial reference’ is described by Rajewsky as a process that can be

‘understood as meaning-constitutional strategies that contribute to the media product’s
overall signification’ (Rajewsky 2005: 52). In intermedial reference, ‘the given media-
product thematizes, evokes, or imitates elements or structures of another, conventionally
distinct medium through the use of its own media-specific means’ (Rajewsky 2005:
52). The main characteristic of this category is that it concerns processes in which ‘the
media product uses its own media-specific means, either to refer to a specific, individual
work produced in another medium …, or to refer to a specific medial subsystem … or to
another medium qua system’ (Rajewsky 2005: 52). What distinguishes it from medial
234 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

transposition is that this type (intermedial reference) conceives reference in a broader

sense, by grouping both media products, media features (such as genre) and the medium
itself as able to be referenced in a specific media product. Similar to medial transposition,
in intermedial reference ‘[t]he given product thus constitutes itself partly or wholly in
relation to the work, system, or subsystem to which it refers’ (Rajewsky 2005: 52). While
film adaptations of literary texts and novelizations are examples of medial transposition,
allusions in a literary text to a specific film, to a film genre or even to the film qua
medium exemplify intermedial reference, as does a reference in a film to painting, or in a
painting to photography (Rajewsky 2010). From Rajewsky’s viewpoint, phenomena such
as the musicalization of literature, transposition d’art, ekphrasis and so forth also can be
described as intermedial reference.
Rajewsky (2005) also emphasizes that a media product can present more than one
or all of the categories she describes as intermedial processes. Using a film example,
she claims that, besides being a case of media combination,1 it can also be both medial
transposition (if it is an adaptation of some literary work) and intermedial reference (if it
alludes to other media products, such as a literary text, a painting or a play, for example).

CLAUS CLÜVER – TRANSPOSITION, TRANSFORMATION

AND ADAPTATION
For Clüver (2007: 33), ‘questions of transposition, transformation, and adaptation are
certainly central topics of studies of intermediality’. Some problems he addresses include
the following questions:

can a musical setting of a lyric poem be considered an adaptation of the lyrics to the
medium of music? What is the relation of an opera libretto to its literary source and
to the opera as performed? Is the use of a preexisting composition in an advertisement
on television or radio an instance of adaptation? How does this process compare to the
adaptation of a Shakespearean play to the Kabuki stage?
(Clüver 2017: 463)

Clüver deals with these topics separately and classifies the phenomena as belonging to
three types – media combination, intermedial reference and intermedial transposition
or transformation – thereby indicating that they overlap in different ways among the
observed phenomena. This classification appears in several of his works, often associated
with examples of adaptation from operas and theatrical dance, to concrete and visual
poetry. For Clüver, ‘illustration, transposition into instrumental music or dance,
adaptation, and ekphrasis’ (Clüver 2017: 459) are often included in the third category
(intermedial transposition or transformation). According to him, ‘adaptation is a process
that may involve many different media, both as source and as target media’ (Clüver
2017: 460). He claims that ‘the term [adaptation] seems best used to cover the process
(and its results) of adjusting a specific source text to the requirements and possibilities
of another medium in such a way that parts of it are retained and incorporated in the
resultant new text [medial configuration]’ (Clüver 2009 [1992]: 464). Recently, Clüver
expanded this concept: ‘I would now enlarge this formulation to include the adaptation of
genres, the imitation in a different medium of formal features or compositional strategies
employed in specific configurations, as well as the idea of intramedial adaptation’ (Clüver
2017: 464).
TRANSLATION IN INTERMEDIAL STUDIES 235

Regarding the best known mechanisms associated with the relationship between
source and target, Clüver draws attention to the importance of a focus on the differences
between the source text and the target text in cases of adaptation, in which neither the
process nor the final results are the same: ‘we speak of adaptation when a narrative is
turned into a play or a movie, or a play into an opera. Stories can be transposed into
comic strips, and fairy tales into ballets; but in these two instances neither the process
nor the end results are alike’ (Clüver 2017: 463). Such transpositions can also occur from

word to image (e.g., graphic illustrations), from word to music (e.g., tone poems, but
not songs), from the visual arts to music and vice versa, besides other media. Most
frequently, however, is the adaptation of texts to a different medium, where elements
of the source text are carried over into the target text.
(Clüver 2007: 24)

Clüver identifies adaptation with a form of transformation, ‘a form of transformation

that may involve intersemiotic transposition but requires a theoretical treatment of its
own’ (Clüver 2007: 33). He claims that ‘adaptations of verbal texts to the cinema [for
example] have induced an extensive discussion, which includes the question whether a
film is indeed a multi-media and/or mixed-media text or whether it should be compared,
in essential features, to an installation, which is probably best read as an intermedia text’
(Clüver 2007: 33). Multimedia, mixed-media and intermedia text are three classifying
subtypes created by Clüver for the phenomenon considered as ‘media combination’
(Rajewsky 2005, 2010). This is not to say that such classifying subtypes cannot be
used in adaptation phenomenon. As Clüver himself states, the three categories (media
combination, intermedial reference and intermedial transposition or transformation) are
not mutually exclusive (Clüver 2017).

WERNER WOLF – TRANSMEDIALITY, INTERMEDIAL

TRANSPOSITION AND INTERMEDIAL REFERENCE
Elaborated as a ‘dichotomous mode’, Wolf’s (2002, 2009, 2011) general typology
of intermedial (and interart) phenomena describes the phenomena on the basis of
oppositions.2 While a broader sense of ‘intermediality’ (Wolf 2002: 17) is referred
to as ‘extracompositional intermediality’ in Wolf’s typology, ‘intermediality in the
narrow sense’ (Wolf 2002: 16) concerns what the author defines as ‘intracompositional
intermediality’. Together, these two forms3 constitute the main and basic groups of his
‘typological revisiting of intermediality’ (Wolf 2002: 13) and they are better understood
by comparing one to another. According to Wolf’s proposal, the extracompositional field
concerns intermedial relations ‘that can be deduced from a comparison between certain
works or signifying phenomena’ (Wolf 2002: 18). This type includes transgression of
boundaries between conventionally distinct media of communication that ‘not only
occur within one work or semiotic complex but also as a consequence of relations
or comparisons between different works or semiotic complexes’ (Wolf 2002: 17). In
contrast, intracompositional intermediality can generally be defined as ‘a direct or
indirect participation of more than one medium of communication in the signification
and/or semiotic structure of a work or semiotic complex, an involvement that must
be verifiable within this semiotic entity’ (Wolf 2002: 17). It is possible to affirm that
236 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

translation is observed both as extracompositional and intracompositional phenomena

in Wolf’s general typology. Regarding extracompositional types, they can be described
as transmediality or intermedial transposition. In contrast, if it is considered to be an
intracompositional phenomenon, it can be described as one of the intermedial reference
subforms, that is, as implicit and explicit reference.

Transmediality and intermedial transposition

Wolf (2002, 2007, 2009) suggests the existence of two types of extracompositional
intermediality. The first one, transmediality, concerns processes that can be identified
as non-specific to individual media. The term follows Rajewsky’s notion of ‘transmedial
phenomenon’ (cf. Rajewsky 2002) when it also designates traits that ‘appear in more than
one medium and can therefore form points of contact or bridges between heteromedial
semiotic entities’ (Wolf 2009: 137).
Transmediality can be described as ‘a quality of cultural signification’ observed ‘on
the level of ahistorical formal devices that occur in more than one medium’ (Wolf
2009: 137). Wolf presents it as ‘the least obvious form’ of intermedial relation, ‘since
it comprises phenomena that can only be revealed to involve more than one medium
on the basis of comparative reflection’ (Wolf 2002: 27). Examples of transmedial
processes are the repeated use of motifs, thematic variation and narrativity – features
that cannot be restricted to a single medium, but which can be found in several media,
such as verbal narrative, opera and film. He also highlights the existence of further
instances of transmediality concerning ‘characteristic historical traits that are shared by
either the formal or the content level of several media in given periods’ (Wolf 2009:
138). An exemplary case would be ‘pathetic expressivity characteristic of eighteenth-
century sensibility’ (Wolf 2011: 4), which can be traced in drama, fiction, poetry, opera,
instrumental music, visual arts, etc. Myths are another interesting case of transmediality,
since they ‘have become cultural scripts and have lost their relationship to an original text
or medium’ (Wolf 2011: 5).
Regarding transmediality, the focus is not on one particular source medium. Even
when we approach specific works (instead of a particular medium or genre), their
transmedial aspect lies in them not having ‘an easily traceable origin which can be
attributed to a certain medium’ (Wolf 2011: 5) – this is an important characteristic of
extracompositional intermediality, and one of the aspects that enables us to distinguish
it from the intermedial transposition. According to Wolf’s typology, whenever ‘similar
contents or formal aspects appear in works of different media’, and whenever it would
be possible to identify some of them as originated in a specific medium, then there is a
case of intermedial transposition (Wolf 2009: 138). Wolf (2009: 138) also describes
it as ‘a transfer between two media’, and explains that this type of extracompositional
intermediality may be related both ‘to parts or to the entirety of individual works’
(Wolf 2002: 19).
Wolf (see 2002, 2009, 2011) frequently appeals to a distinction between ‘content’
and ‘form’ to achieve some kind of differentiation between what we could consider as a
medium (form) and the productions that occur in it (content). It is in this context that he
states, for example, that ‘in intermedial transposition, the range of possibilities applies to
both the formal and the content level’ (Wolf 2009: 138). According to his definition of
intermedial transposition, ‘the objects of translation are the signifieds of the source work
or medium and/or their effects’ (Wolf 2002: 25).
TRANSLATION IN INTERMEDIAL STUDIES 237

Intermedial transposition ‘from a “source” to a “target” medium can apply both to

parts and to the entirety of individual semiotic entities and also to larger units such as
genres’ (Wolf 2009: 138). Examples include the ‘employment of a narrator’, since it
can originate from verbal fiction and becomes a ‘voice-over’ in a film. For Wolf (2002:
20), ‘[t]he most common variant of intermedial transposition in contemporary culture’
does not apply to ‘elements of specific media but to entire works’. Exemplary cases are
the translations of novels into films, which have become frequent since the 1950s, and
the present trend of creating novels based on films. Like cases of extracompositional
intermediality, these all are processes in which the ‘intermedial quality is primarily
located in the space between the two works’ (Wolf 2002: 20), and intermedial quality
is not necessarily given in the end product, in the target one. Although Beaumarchais’s
(1778) pre-text is a source of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s (1786) libretto and, hence, of Mozart’s
Le Nozze di Figaro (1786), the opera can be accessed and understood without this
previous knowledge. Wolf explains that, in cases like this, the genetic relation ‘does
not essentially contribute to the signification or meaning of the opera as such’, because
‘intermedial transpositions characteristically result in relatively independent signifying
units’ (Wolf 2002: 20). He stresses the autonomy of both source and target works in
intermedial transpositions, as a way to establish one of the distinctions between this type
of extracompositional intermediality and a subform of the intracompositional one, which
is described as intermedial reference.

Intermedial reference
Intermedial reference is one of the two subforms of intracompositional intermediality
that concerns intermediality in a narrower sense, according to Wolf’s proposal. The
most important difference between such phenomena and extracompositional ones is
that, in cases of intermedial reference, involvement of one medium with another ‘is
discernible within the work in question’ (Wolf 2011: 5). Contrasting to transmediality
and intermedial transposition, intermedial relation is, furthermore, an integral part of the
‘signification’ (Wolf 2011: 5) of a work. In opposition to the plurimediality (other of the
two intracompositional types), intermedial reference ‘does not give the impression of a
medial hybridity of the signifiers, nor of a heterogeneity of the semiotic systems used’;
rather, it represents ‘a medial and semiotic homogeneity and thus qualifies as “covert”
intracompositional intermediality’ (Wolf 2011: 5). According to Wolf (2011: 5), it
happens because intermedial references ‘operate exclusively on the basis of the signifiers
of the dominant4 “source” medium and can incorporate only signifiers of another medium
where these are already a part of the source medium’. If, in intermedial transpositions,
the target works have some autonomy to be interpreted without considering the source
works, in cases of references, the intermedial process is ‘part of the signification of the
work in which such references occur and is, therefore, a requisite for an understanding of
the work’ (Wolf 2011: 5).
Wolf’s notion of intermedial reference comprises two main subforms: ‘intermedial
thematization’ and ‘explicit reference’. For Wolf (2011: 6), ‘heteromedial reference
resides in the signifieds of the referring semiotic complex, while its signifiers are employed
in the usual way and do not contribute to heteromedial imitation’. Heteromedial reference
concerns a phenomenon frequently observed in the verbal media, and it often happens
when some medium (or some work produced in a determined medium) is mentioned,
discussed or somehow ‘thematized’ in a text. Articles and essays on intermediality are
238 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

examples of explicit reference, as are the novels that describe paintings, photographic
images, pieces of music, etc. ‘Implicit reference’ (or ‘intermedial imitation’) is the second
subform. Wolf differentiates ways and intensity degrees of this type (2002, 2009, 2011).
According to this model, ‘partial reproduction’ (Wolf 2011: 6) is the first level of implicit
reference and it can be observed, for example, when quotations of song texts occur in
novels. Next is ‘evocation’ (Wolf 2011: 6), and includes ekphrasis as an exemplary case
(which can also be thematization). At a higher level is ‘formal imitation’ (Wolf 2011:
6) – an important phenomenon in Wolf’s view, as it concerns a type in which ‘the
intermedial signification’ consists of ‘the effect of a particularly unusual iconic use of the
signs of the source medium’ (Wolf 2011: 6). An important feature of formal imitation
is its ‘attempt at shaping the material of the semiotic complex in question … in such a
manner that it acquires a formal resemblance to typical features or structures of another
medium or heteromedial work’ (Wolf 2011: 6). Examples of formal imitation include the
reproduction of a sonata form in a poem, the ‘musicalization’ (Wolf 2011) of a novel and
the use of cinematographic patterns, as montage methods, to structure a graphic novel. It
seems to be Wolf’s type that comes closest to what Jakobson (1959) called ‘intersemiotic
translation’.

LARS ELLESTRÖM – TRANSMEDIALITY, TRANSPOSITION,

TRANSMEDIATION AND REPRESENTATION
Elleström divides his approach to intermedial phenomena into a synchronic and a
diachronic perspective. The second perspective is usually referred to as ‘transmediality’,
and designates processes of ‘transfer and transformation’ (Elleström 2019: 2) of media
products and characteristics. In this context, transmediality concerns medial relationships
in which ‘different media types share basic traits’ (Elleström 2019: 2). According to
Elleström’s model, these transmedial processes5 can be described according to two
inextricable categories: ‘transmediation’ and ‘media representation’ (Elleström 2019: 4).

Transmediation
Transmediation is a type of intermedial process in which it is possible to observe ‘repeated
representation of media traits’ (Elleström 2019: 3). In recent works (see Elleström 2017,
2019), this seems to be a development of his earlier notion of ‘mediation’ (Elleström
2010: 28), used to describe processes in which ‘a technical medium’ ‘harbour[s] media
products’ (Elleström 2019: 4). Following this suggestion, we could consider that a piece
of paper is a technical medium able to mediate several kinds of media products, such as
poems, drawings, scientific articles, musical scores, food recipes, bar charts and maps,
and to mediate several kinds of qualified media, such as literature, comics, painting and
newspapers. Elleström (2019: 4) states that, when ‘equivalent sensory configurations
(sensory configurations that have the capacity to trigger corresponding representations)
are mediated for a second (or third or fourth) time and by another type of technical
medium, they are transmediated’. If a poem, or a piece of news, is read out loud, for
example, it is transmediated by another type of technical medium with different sensory
configurations (it is heard instead of seen/read). If this poem, or this news, could be
read as a photographed object, it would be transmediated once more. In this case, the
photographic image would become one of its technical media.
TRANSLATION IN INTERMEDIAL STUDIES 239

According to Elleström (2019: 3), transmediation can be both ‘remediation’6 and

‘transformation’ of media products and qualified media. The example given, of a written
poem being read or photographed, predominantly suits in the first case, while adaptation
and Ekphrasis can be described as the second one, transformation, which is a most radical
level of transmediation (Elleström 2010, 2017). We can say transformation corresponds
to what Rajewsky (2005: 51) calls ‘medial transposition’. However, in one of his recent
articles, Elleström (2019) argues that he is more interested in focusing on the modal
similarities and the differences among media products and qualified media than on the
relations among media and among media products, as Rajewsky does.
Elleström (2019: 6) describes ‘adaptation’ (not only the archetypical case of
adaptation – novel-to-film – but also that involving media such as theatre, computer games,
opera, comics and graphic novels) as ‘transmediation’, that is, as a kind of transformation
in which a media product is translated7 from one medium to another, and explores the
modal characteristics of each involved medium in order to establish correspondences
between a source and a target work. For the same reason, ‘Ekphrasis’ can be described
as a transmediation process, although, as we will see, it is also defined by Elleström as a
case of media representation. According to Elleström’s model, cases in which we do not
observe a transposition of one ‘instance of media’ (Elleström 2010: 57) to another one,
can also be described as transformations. They are considered to be processes in which
‘less definitive and fragmentary media traits … travel between modes and media types’
(Elleström 2010: 34). It occurs, for example, when a ‘musical form is traced in a short
story or when visual traits associated with comic strips can be said to have found their
way to the moving images of motion pictures’ (Elleström 2010: 34). Disregarding, for
a moment, the specificities of approaches, we could find a parallel with Rajewsky’s and
Wolf’s notions of ‘reference’.

Representation
Media representation refers to intermedial processes in which one medium represents
another one. Elleström (2019: 4) defines it as ‘a medium present[ing] another medium
to the mind of a communicatee’. As a kind of media transformation, representation
concerns cases of a ‘medium, which is something that represents something in a context
of communication, becomes represented itself’ (Elleström 2019: 4). Representation and
transmediation are notions that can be understood better when they are compared to each
other. Transmediation can be considered something ‘about “picking out” elements from a
medium and using them in a new way in another medium’, and media representation can
be described as ‘about “pointing to” a medium from the viewpoint of another medium’
(Elleström 2019: 4). When a film includes a theatre performance, we are talking about
a transmedial process that is predominantly a media representation. In its turn, ‘a film
whose story closely resembles that of a theatrical play should instead be understood in
terms of transmediation’ (Elleström 2019: 5).
It is also possible to say transmediation refers to cases of two or more works (and
media) representing a common phenomenon. On the other hand, representation could
be described as processes in which some medium happens as the object of a media
product (and of the medium through which that media product occurs). In the second
case (representation), it is possible to observe what Elleström (2010) presents as qualified
media becoming objects of media products.
240 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

JOHN BATEMAN – A MULTIMODAL PERSPECTIVE

ON TRANSMEDIALITY
Bateman (2017, 2019) proposes an approach to intermedial phenomena and
transmediality that is based on Elleström’s model. According to Bateman, transmedial
relationships are processes ‘characterized by comparing and contrasting media products’
(2019: 5) along Elleström’s four dimensions of media modalities: material, sensorial,
spatiotemporal and semiotic. By establishing a semiotic foundation to characterize medial
configurations, Bateman (2017: 170) describes ‘transmedial transformations’ as referring
to matches ‘in the capabilities, or “reach”, of the semiotic modes involved’. He argues that
transmediality is a process that crucially relies ‘on the embodied nature of the semiotic
modes’ deployed by the media, and on ‘their use for discourse’ (Bateman 2019: 10).
From Bateman’s viewpoint, transmedial configurations ‘speak to shared or overlapping
embodied materiality tied together by common discourse concerns for orchestrating
communicative effect’ (2019: 14).
By conceiving transmediality as a semiotic phenomenon, Bateman stresses some
aspects by which investigations on transmedial processes can benefit from a Peircean
approach. For instance, transmediality is related to communicative practices that are able
to ‘move between and across materially very different forms of communication’ (Bateman
2019: 4), including iconicity and symbolic-legisigns. Bateman states that an adequate
account of transmediality depends on the establishment of a connection between semiotic
modes and legisigns. According to Bateman, ‘[i]t is not the presence of bare similarities
of material possibilities or patterns (i.e., iconicity) that support transmediality but rather
the purposive deployment (i.e., legisigns and the middle and lower semiotic strata of a
semiotic mode) of any such material possibilities in the service of congruent discourse
goals’ (Bateman 2019: 9).
For Bateman, explaining transmedial relationships requires understanding the
interrelations between ‘semiotic modes’, ‘media’ and ‘genres’. By establishing a
framework relating to these three concepts, he proposes an original approach to the task
to incorporate the notion of genre into the studies of intermediality and transmediality.
Bateman (2017: 169) conceives genre as a ‘“higher order” category that is intrinsically
both transmedial (i.e., ranging across media) and transmodal (i.e., ranging across semiotic
modes)’. According to this approach, the genre would be able to provide ‘“comparison”
points across diverse medial realizations’ (Bateman 2017: 169). For Bateman, this
multimodal semiotic framework, achieved through ‘triangulating’ (2017: 171) the
concepts of ‘semiotic mode’, ‘media’ and ‘genre’, would constitute the most adequate
way of dealing with a variety of transmedial phenomena.

JOÃO QUEIROZ (AND COLLEAGUES) – INTERSEMIOTIC

TRANSLATION AND COGNITIVE ARTEFACTS
Queiroz and colleagues have built a theoretical frame for the phenomenon of intersemiotic
translation in the creative arts; the framework is inspired mainly by (and based on)
distributed cognitive science (Clark 2010; Menary 2010), and Peirce’s mature semiotics.
The resulting work and projects include theoretical, descriptive and analytical works, and
creative projects in the fields of contemporary dance, visual arts, computer-based music
TRANSLATION IN INTERMEDIAL STUDIES 241

and poetry (see Aguiar, Castelões et al. 2015; Vitral et al. 2016; Salimena and Queiroz
2015; Cleyge et al. forthcoming).
In Queiroz’ approach, intersemiotic translation (IT) is a cognitive artefact (a mind-tool
or a cognitive technology) that scaffolds creativity in several scales. Such scales (temporal
and spatial) can be combined in analysis. IT can be described as a cognitive artifact designed
as a predictive, generative and meta-semiotic tool that distributes artistic creativity
(Queiroz, Fernandes et al. 2021; Queiroz and Atã 2019; 2020; Castello-Branco and
Queiroz 2019; Aguiar, Atã et al. et al. 2015). The phenomenon can be seen as ‘implants’
on ‘cognitive cyborgs’. This hypothesis is directly influenced by recent developments in
distributed cognitive science (see Anderson and Wheeler 2019). Queiroz explored these
ideas and took advantage of several examples of ITs to theatrical dance (from a visual
perspective in architecture to classical ballet), to Merce Cunningham’s choreographic
composition (from Cage’s protocols of music indeterminacy), to protocubist literature
(from Paul Cézanne), to concrete poetry (from Webern’s musical serialism) and others.
Queiroz’s ideas can be summarized as follows. As an augmented cognitive artefact, IT
works as a predictive tool – anticipating new and surprising patterns of semiotic events
and processes, keeping under control the emergence of new patterns. (This property
decreases the descriptive complexity of an environment of decisions and choices.) At the
same time, it works as a generative model, by providing new, unexpected, surprising data
in the target system, and affording competing results that allow the system to generate
candidate instances. (This property increases the descriptive complexity of an environment
of decisions and choices, thereby increasing the offer of alternative instances.) As a
meta-semiotic tool, IT creates a meta-level semiotic process, a sign-action that stands
for the action of a sign. It creates an ‘experimental laboratory’ for performing semiotic
experiments. IT submits semiotic systems to unusual conditions and provides a scenario
for observing the emergence of new and surprising semiotic behaviour as a result.
His approach depends on two fundamental premises: (1) semiotic cognitive
externalism, according to which ‘mind is out there’ and it is ‘made of signs’; (2) ‘sign
is a process’, according to which the fundamental explanatory building-block is ‘sign in
action’ (the process of semiosis). In contrast to a strong internalist trend in philosophy of
translation, Queiroz’s ideas on IT (via Peirce and the distributed cognitive approach) are
centred on the design and exploration of external cognitive tools and artefacts (materials,
procedures, protocols, rules, mind structures, cultural and physical tools, etc). What
does that mean? In terms of explanatory modelling, cognitive process of translation is
usually associated with mental abilities. The main research problems are framed in an
internalist framework, according to which cognition is described as the processing of
internal representations, and, accordingly, the notion of sign in translation is understood
as similar to cognitivist representation. A Peircean theoretical scenario suggests something
different: translation is described as a non-psychological process, materially and socially
distributed in space-time, and strongly based on the design and use of external cognitive
artefacts (sign processes). This situated view of cognition does not see the individual agent
(translator) as the centre of creative processes but as participant in wider cognitive systems
that are dependent on cognitive cultural ecologies. In concert with Queiroz’s ideas, IT is a
context-sensitive (historically and physically situated), interpretant-dependent (dialogic),
materially extended (embodied) abductive process. This view emphasizes self-organizing
process and emergence.
242 TRANSLATION BEYOND TRANSLATION STUDIES

FINAL COMMENTS
Adaptation, transmediation, intermedial reference, intersemiotic translation … are we
talking about the same phenomenon? If we are, how can we establish a systematic set
of comparisons controlled by some unified theoretical frame? This task often seems to
be impracticable, for various reasons. The task must involve several theoretical steps,
including the definition of basic research questions and primitive explanatory components.
And this is still far from being done. For some authors, the explanatory component is
‘media’ (Wolf, Rajewsky, Clüver). Müller points to the problem: ‘We know dozens of
proposals to define a medium on the basis of different scientific paradigms ranging from
philosophical, social, economical, biological, communicational and technological frames
to channels of discourse, simulations, and patterns of actions or of cognitive processes – to
mention just a few items’ (2010b: 237). Indeed, for many authors, any explanations of
adaptation (or transmediation) should be based on the notion of medium. But for others,
such as Elleström and Bateman, the basic component is ‘modality’ (modal is the primitive
unity of explanation), and the notion of media being a derivative. For Queiroz, semiosis
(sign in action) is the fundamental theoretical entity. The question, What is intersemiotic
translation? is directly related to the question, What is semiosis?
Obviously, any decision about the fundamental explanatory frame, its structure and
premises, is directly related to the methods and materials (examples and cases) selected
for the analyses. What we have introduced here should be seen as the first step in a more
systematic treatment that should be developed further in the future. This chapter is a
preparatory scenario for this task.

NOTES
1 Rajewsky’s (2005) model for intermedial phenomena is based on three main categories.
Besides the ones presented here – medial transposition and intermedial reference – there is
also ‘media combination’, a category describing intermedial relations in which two or more
media participate in the constitution of a medium or a media product.
2 Despite being presented by the author as oppositions, it is important to note that the
intermedial forms proposed by the author are not considered necessarily occurring
separately in individual works but possible (and even probable) to be combined in several
ways (Wolf 2002).
3 In each section we opted to follow the terminology chosen by the author being discussed.
Thus, what Wolf describes as form here can be considered as a category in Elleström’s
model, for example.
4 Wolf (2002: 23; 2011: 5) uses the term ‘dominant’ to describe the medium through
which we access another medium as a preferred to (a ‘non dominant’, cf. Wolf 2002: 23)
in a work. The author observes that, in such cases, the referred medium ‘is actually only
“present” as an idea, as a signified and hence as a reference’ (Wolf 2002: 23).
5 Note that Elleström’s intermedial typology is not limited to transmedial processes.
However, in this work, we focus on our aim to present how translation phenomena are
treated by some contemporary researchers on interart, intermediality, multimodality.
6 It is important to note that Elleström does not state this term as equivalent to its use by
Bolter and Grusin (2000) in their well-known work on digital media (see Elleström 2010,
for a deeper understanding of this distinction).
TRANSLATION IN INTERMEDIAL STUDIES 243

7 Elleström (2019: 3) himself points out that he understands transmediality as translation,

but because of the strong associations of the term with transfers among different verbal
languages, he chooses to use other words, as we can see cited in this section.

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 INDEX

agency 53, 55, 64, 66–70, 75–7, 105, 120–1, Jerusalem 205–7, 209
123, 125–6, 130, 133–5, 148, 158,
176, 219, 221–3 machine translation 19, 30, 146, 154, 169
Aristotle 12, 19, 165, 167, 178, 180, 182–3, metaphorical 2, 5, 120, 129, 133–4, 147, 200
185, 188 monolingual 11, 121–3, 126–7
autopoiesis 70–1 multilingual 3, 53, 55, 99, 103–4, 114,
119–22, 126–9, 131–3, 135, 145–6,
bio- 148, 157–8
medicine 10, 81 multimodality 199, 208, 242
semiotics 1, 42, 45, 64, 67, 70–1, 75–7,
221 natural language processing (nlp) 146, 147,
154
coding (including decoding, encoding and negentropy 11, 34
non-coding) 43–4, 52, 65, 66, 111, numinous 202
144, 148–9, 151, 173
communities 39, 40, 46, 52–3, 59 organizational change 119–20, 122–4, 132–3
complementarity 26, 37
computer/information science 1, 9–11, 39, 40, performance studies 171, 177, 188
44, 45, 59, 85, 155, 158 protein synthesis 63–8, 71–3, 77
cosmology/cosmogony 197, 204, 214
cross-cultural 122, 165, 171–2, 176, 187 reception 55–6, 72, 103, 125, 130, 134, 143,
146, 156–7, 181, 207
digital representational system 34, 37
humanities 46–7, 143–4, 153
literary studies 143 sacred esplanade 207
San rock paintings 210, 212
electronic literature 143–4, 146–8 semiosis 8, 21, 24, 67–70, 72, 75, 77, 166,
English 4, 5, 11, 42, 44, 47, 56, 101, 105, 168, 173, 185–7, 220–1, 224, 227,
107–9, 113, 120–2, 124–9, 131, 134–5, 231, 241–2
145, 148–9, 151–9, 173–5, 183, 186, (inter)semiotic translation 5, 7, 11, 63,
189 99–100, 112–14, 165–6, 169–70, 183,
entanglement 39, 52, 56 197, 199, 208, 210, 220, 224 231, 238,
entropy 11, 34, 37 240–2
evidence-based 84–5 semiotics 2–3, 12, 20, 21, 30, 33, 57, 63–4,
166, 168, 172, 186, 189, 197, 201,
friendship 3, 12, 93, 165–91 219–21, 223–4, 240
of space 201
hierophany 203, 214 simulation 41, 52–6, 59

immune system 44, 71–2 trans

implementation science 82, 89, 91 disciplinary 2, 9–10, 39, 47, 52, 146
incommensurability 34, 36–7, 175, 184 duction 10, 42, 48, 72
intermediality 12–13, 145, 150, 231–7, 240, mutation 99, 112, 124, 150
242 science 10, 42, 49, 50, 52
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