Dynamics of Basic Terminology in Translation Science between “East” and “West”

In the science of translation, every notion is a consequence of the underlying view of meaning (and meaning-generating mechanisms). In other words, any view of translation takes for granted a semiotic metalevel. The three semiotic conceptions considered here are Peircean (American) semiotics, Lotmanian (Russian-Estonian) semiotics, and Saussurean (Swiss-Western European) semiologie. In Western Europe, the Saussurean concept of “signification” has been dominating: the signifiant-signifié view has been fuelling, in its turn, the “equivalence” view in translation, because it postulates a two-way correspondence between what is perceived (signifiant) and what is meant (signifié). Assuming equivalence as an a priori target, some Western-European schools of translation make every possible effort to show that equivalence is what translation is about, going as far as to conceive far-fetched – at least from a practical point of view – theories like the one about “functional equivalence” (Nida). By contrast, the Peircean, triadic view of semiosis (protosign-translatant-metasign), on one side, and the Lotmanian-Vygotskian view of self-communication (inner discourse, I-I communication), on the other side, consider the new meaning produced by the change in context that every communication act implies. In this framework, translation is viewed as a meaning-generating device (Lotman), and the aim of translation is not equivalence, but rather a shift of the meaning of the prototext that is consistent with the communication data given by the prototext and with the relationship existing between the transmitting culture and the receiving culture. Jakobson’s 1959 article “On linguistic aspects of translation”, an attempt to bridge the gaps among the different scientific environments, is still only partially understood. One problem is the word “linguistic” in its title. Jakobson suggested a scientific method to approach translation, but in Western Europe, with the semiological emphasis on the verbal component, “linguistic” is interpreted as referring to a text without extraverbal implications. Other words considered are “scientific”, “literary”, “impressionistic”, “humanistic”.