Semiotics and the Problem of Translation: With Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce

Here is a radically interdisciplinary account of how Charles S. Peirce's theory of signs can be made to interact meaningfully with translation theory. In the separate chapters of this book on "semiotranslation", the author shows that the various phenomena we commonly refer to as "translation" are different forms of "genuine" and "degenerate" semiosis. Also drawing on insights from Ludwig Wittgenstein and Walter Benjamin (and drawing analogies between their work and Peirce's) it is argued that through the kaleidoscopic, evolutionary process of unlimited translation, signs deploy their meaning-potentialities. This enables the author to throw novel light upon Roman Jakobson's three kinds of translation - intralingual, interlingual, and intersemiotic translation. Gorlée's pioneering study will entice translation specialists, semioticians, and (language) philosophers into expanding their views upon translation and, hopefully, into cooperative research projects.