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The Translator’s Gaze: Intersemiotic Translation as Transactional Process

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Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders

Abstract

This first chapter sets the stage and provides a theoretical and analytical framework for the rest of the volume in the context of semiotics, cognitive poetics, psychoanalysis and transformative learning theory. Challenging boundaries between source and target and recognizing the topographical limitations that tend to be placed on conceptions of modalities and media, we offer a perspective of intersemiotic translation as a subjective, synaesthetic and relational experience to be rendered, rather than a message or content-and-form package to be carried across modal or medial boundaries. Hence, we posit that what makes intersemiotic translation translation is not so much the end result but the praxis of translation, illustrating our argument with examples from our own practice: Translation Games, Wozu Image? and Jetties.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See also Bryan Eccleshall, Chapter 12, “An Analytic of Making” in this volume.

  2. 2.

    Reddy includes a number of examples, such as “getting one’s thoughts across”, “giving someone an idea of something”, “capturing an idea in words” etc. See Reddy (1979: 286).

  3. 3.

    Translation Games was co-founded by Ricarda Vidal with a colleague in 2013 to explore shared interests in curation and translation via public workshops, events and exhibitions. Since then, Vidal has collaborated with visual artists working in and across diverse genres, literary translators and textile designers. Translation Games involves chain translation, multiple, circular and back translation within literary and intersemiotic translation practices. For more information see www.translationgames.net.

  4. 4.

    Ricarda Vidal and Sam Treadaway have a long-standing collaboration which focuses on response within the visual arts: since 2011 they have been curating the Revolve:R bookwork series (www.revolve-r.com). Revolve:R edition one (2013) charted the purely visual correspondence between Treadaway/Vidal and a selection of international artists over the period of one year. Edition two (2015) and edition three (2018, forthcoming) also include responses by poets, filmmakers and musicians. For edition three, Vidal’s contributions take the form of intersemiotic translations rather than responses.

  5. 5.

    See also Heather Connelly’s Chapter 10, “Beyond Representation”, in this volume and her adoption of Félix Guattari’s perspective on “a-signifying semiotics” (1984: 75).

  6. 6.

    For a discussion on boundaries and interaction in Juri Lotman’s (2005) semiosphere, see Arlene Tucker’s Chapter 11, “Translation is Dialogue: Language in Transit”, in the present volume.

  7. 7.

    Jacques Lacan has been retranslated by Madeleine Campbell here to propose a slight shift from Alan Sheridan’s 1981 translation of “le mimétisme” as mimicry (Lacan‚ 1981: 86, 113–15, 121–22, 124). It is our impression that Lacan’s concept is not entirely about mimicry, nor, as Lacan confirms here, about imitation (which we take to be a passive semblance that does not engage, or only passively engages, a relation between the subject and object), but is more a matter of mimesis (which we take to be charged with the notion of “l’élan”, the forward motion [of the act] as described in Lacan (1973: 134)).

  8. 8.

    See Jen Calleja’s Chapter 16, “Life’s too Short: On Translating Christian Marclay’s Photo-Book The Clock” in the present volume.

  9. 9.

    But see for example Sophie Collins, Chapter 17, on “Radical Ekphrasis” in the present volume.

  10. 10.

    An example of both embodied and materialmimesis can be found in the Jetties workshops described at the end of the present chapter.

  11. 11.

    Also see Chapter 17 by Sophie Collins, where she critiques the impact of online media in contemporary ekphrastic encounters.

  12. 12.

    More information about the Jetties project and workshops can be found at www.jettiesproject.tumblr.com.

  13. 13.

    Details of the Hunterian exhibition “Haجar and the Anجel” can be found at the following link: https://www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/learning/hunterianassociates/hagarinstallation/.

  14. 14.

    An interview of visual artist Birthe Jørgensen regarding her process in the creation of this installation can be found at the following link: https://www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/learning/hunterianassociates/hagarinstallation/abouttheartists/.

  15. 15.

    For a methodology of self-negotiation based on the artwork as trigger, evolved in part from Christopher Bollas’ (2009: 79–94) “evocative object,” see Chapter 14 by Gaia Del Negro in this volume.

  16. 16.

    See also Marta Masiero’s account of a Jetties workshop in Chapter 15 in this volume.

  17. 17.

    The participant’s daughter’s name, given here as Noura, has been changed to protect her identity.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Madeleine Campbell

  2. King’s College London, London, UK

    Ricarda Vidal

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  1. Madeleine Campbell
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  2. Ricarda Vidal
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Correspondence to Madeleine Campbell or Ricarda Vidal .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

    Madeleine Campbell

  2. Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London, London, UK

    Ricarda Vidal

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Campbell, M., Vidal, R. (2019). The Translator’s Gaze: Intersemiotic Translation as Transactional Process. In: Campbell, M., Vidal, R. (eds) Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97244-2_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97244-2_1

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