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Intersemiotic translation: transcreation and diagrams

Conference Paper · May 2019

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Letícia Vitral Joao Queiroz

Linnaeus University Federal University of Juiz de Fora
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 Intersemiotic translation: transcreation and diagrams
Letícia Vitral (Linnaeus University/Sweden - leticiaavitral@gmail.com)
João Queiroz (Federal University of Juiz de Fora/Brazil - queirozj@gmail.com)

Abstract: Creative translation as a method for investigation was an idea systematically explored by the
Brazilian poet and translator Haroldo de Campos. According to Campos’ approach, creative translation
corresponds to the transcreation of a multi-level system of constraints, "selected" and revealed by the target
system. We intend to describe this process as diagrammatic (sensu Peirce), in which the physicality of its
source and target systems have the ontology of a relation. Hence our approach is a tentative association of
Jakobson’s concept of intersemiotic translation, with De Campos’ notion of transcreation based on Peirce’s
notion of diagrams. We intend to describe it by taking the following arguments into consideration: I.
Intersemiotic translation can be described as fundamentally triadic phenomenon, that involves the selection
and interpretation of properties and methods from one semiotic system to be translated into another semiotic
system, bearing the production of an interpretative effect in the latter, that is analogous to the interpretative
effect produced by the former. II. Intersemiotic translation is a method of investigation. As a mainly iconic
process, it produces a sign that signifies by means of its own qualities and structures: this is a well-known
property of iconic signs, namely operational criterion of icons.

1. What is the role of intersemiotic translation for discovery?

The idea of creative translation as a method for literary investigation was systematically
explored by the Brazilian poet and translator Haroldo de Campos. According to Campos’
approach, mainly based on Roman Jakobson [1] and Walter Benjamin [2], creative translation
corresponds to the transcreation of a multi-level system of constraints, "selected" and revealed by
the target-sign, an idea strongly inspired on Peirce’s mature notion of iconicity. For Campos,
transcreation is an iconic operation on the physicality of semiosis. Here we generalize this notion
to intersemiotic translation phenomena. We associate Jakobson’s concept of intersemiotic
translation with De Campos’ notion of transcreation. This association is based on Peirce’s concept
of diagrams as icons of relation. As a mainly iconic process, intersemiotic translation produces a
sign that signifies by means of its own qualities and relational structures: this is a well-known
property of iconic signs, namely operational criterion of icons (see section 2.) [3]. In order to
properly investigate processes of intersemiotic translation based on those arguments, we are going
to analyze a case of translation from architecture (Figure 01) to photography: the exhibitions
named Fachwerkhäuser des Siegener Industriesgebietes, by the German photographers Bernd and
Hilla Becher (Figure 02).
 Figures 01 and 02: the architectural landscape of the Siegerland region (the source of the intersemiotic
translation) and an example of a photographic grid from the Fachwerkhäuser des Siegener
Industriesgebietes exhibition (the target-sign of the intersemiotic translation). (Sources:
http://www.freudenberg-stadt.de/ and http://westfalium.de/2015/10/30/mettingen-die-kunst-des-
aufbewahrens/)

2. Intersemiotic translation as operational icon

The icon is operationally defined [3] as a sign whose manipulation reveals, by direct
observation of its property, some information on its object [4]. This definition represents a de-
trivialization of the concept of icon as a similar entity. If an icon can be characterized as a sign
consisting of interrelated parts that reveals information through its manipulation followed by
observation [3-5] and, if these relations are subject to experimental modifications regulated by
rules, we are working with diagrams. Based on those rules, the translation creates a target-sign, in
which selected properties from the source are transcreated to the target. Since target and source
have different physicalities, the intersemiotic translation recreates the selected characteristics in
different materials in a different semiotic system, revealing important and sometimes not easily
perceived, semiotic and material perspectives on the process, on the source-sign and the on target-
sign.
3. The Intersemiotic Translation of the Fachwerkhäuser des Siegener Industriesgebietes and
the models of iconic semiosis
We approach intersemiotic translation basing on two models [6]: (i) the source of the
translation is the sign, and the target is the interpretant (Figure 03), (ii) the source is the object and
the target is the sign (Figure 04). The first model highlights the production of the target as the
interpretative effect of an intersemiotic translation (the target is a cognitive system), and the second
one highlights the production of an effect on a cognitive system, that might be a reader of a book,
a person that goes in an art exhibition or even an audience composed of several people. By applying
the models to the translation from the architectural landscape of the Siegerland Region, Germany
(as illustrated in Figure 01), to the exhibitions Fachwerkhäuser des Siegener Industriesgebietes
(as illustrated in Figure 02), we derive the following models:

Figure 03: the intersemiotic translation of the Fachwerkhäuser des Siegener Industriesgebietes applied to
the first model.

According to this model, we have the source (the tridimensional spatial configuration of
the areas with framework houses in the Siegerland region) as the sign of the relation, the target
(the photographic exhibitions) as the interpretant, and the object of the source as the object of the
semiosis. The consequence of approaching the source as the sign instead of as the object, is to
stress that the same source has the capacity of determining several different semiotic objects. In
this case, we have the architectural pattern revealed by source as the source’s object, that produced
the exhibition as its interpretant in an intersemiotic translation.
 Figure 04: the intersemiotic translation of the Fachwerkhäuser des Siegener Industriesgebietes applied
to the second model.

As the second model shows, the source of the intersemiotic translation (the tridimensional
spatial configuration of the areas with framework houses in the Siegerland region) is behaving as
the object, the target (the photographic exhibitions) as the sign, and the effect that the sign might
produce in a potential cognitive system as the interpretant. This model stresses the production of
an effect on a cognitive system, and the consequence of it is the creation or revealing of new and/or
surprising information that would lead even to the accomplishment of more intersemiotic
translation processes or similar processes of aesthetic critic and creation. According to our
example, the second model is in dialogue with the affordances and procedures adapted from the
Becher’s works into the aesthetic principles of the, for example, so called Düsseldorf School of
Photography (where the Becher’s used to lecture), composed by artists such as Andreas Gursky,
Candida Höffer, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth and Axel Hütte.
3. Conclusion
Intersemiotic translation iconically replicates semiotic experimental modifications
regulated by rules to observe how another sign system produces analogous effects. The operational
criterion of iconicity connects discovery to the manipulation of diagrams as a process of translation
in which the physicality of the source- and target-signs has the ontology of a relation. What is
translated by the target is a system of rules and regulations. In this sense, the target reveals a
multilevel system of constraints that is analogously observable in the source - in the case of the
Fachwerkhäuser des Siegener Industriesgebietes, this multilevel system of constraints is a set of
architectural-topological properties, that is analogously observable in the tridimensional spatial
configuration of the areas with framework houses in the Siegerland region.
5. References
1. Jakobson, R.: Selected writings. Mouton & co, Paris (1971).
2. Benjamin, W.: Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers. Gesammelte Schriften IV- I, Frankfurt (1923).
3. Stjernfelt, F.: Diagrammatology. Springer, Dordrecht (2007).
4. Peirce, C. In: Hartshorne, C., Weiss, P., Burks, A. (ed.): The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders
Peirce. Electronic edition. Volume 8. InteLex Corporation, Charlottesville, Va. (1994).
5. Hookway, C.: Truth, rationality, and pragmatism. Clarendon Press, Oxford (2002).
6. Queiroz, J., Aguiar, D.: C.S. Peirce and Intersemiotic translation. In: Trifonas, P. (ed.)
International Handbook of Semiotics. pp. 201-215. Springer (2015).

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