Translation as communication and auto-communication

If one wants to understand translation, it is necessary to look at all its aspects from the psychological to the ideological. And it is necessary to see the process of translation, on the one hand, as a complex of interlinguistic, intralinguistic, and intersemiotic translations, and on the other hand, as a complex of linguistic, cultural, economic, and ideological activities. Translators work at the boundaries of languages, cultures, and societies. They position themselves between the poles of specificity and adaptation in accordance with the strategies of their translational behaviour. They either preserve the otherness of the other or they transform the other into self. By the same token, they cease to be simple mediators, because in a semiotic sense they are capable of generating new languages for the description of a foreign language, text, or culture, and of renewing a culture or of having an influence on the dialogic capacity of a culture with other cultures as well as with itself. In this way, translators work not only with natural languages but also with metalanguages, languages of description. One of the missions of the translator is to increase the receptivity and dialogic capability of a culture, and through these also the internal variety of that culture. As mediators between languages, translators are important creators of new metalanguages

Semiotics, anthropology and the analysability of culture

For each culture-studying discipline, the problem of culture’s analysability stems from disciplinary identity. One half of analysability consists of the culture's attitude and the ability of the discipline's methods of description and analysis to render the culture analysable. The other half of analysability is shaped by the discipline’s own adaptation to the characteristics of culture as the object of study and the development of a suitable descriptive language. The ontologisation and epistemologisation of culture as the subject of analysis is present in each culture-studying discipline or discipline complex. Culture analysts are therefore scholars with double responsibilities. Their professionalism is measured on the basis of their analytical capability and the ability to construct (imagine, define) the object of study. The analytical capability and the ability to construct the object of study also determine the parameters of analysability. Be the analyst an anthropologist or a culture semiotician, the analysability of culture depends on how the analyst chooses to conduct the dialogue between him/herself and his/her object of study

The ideological aspect of intersemiotic translation and montage

The Estonian film The Last Relic offers an interesting case of ideological intersemiotic translation. At the same time, it is an innovative film from the point of view of text composition as well as combination of traditional montage with intersemiotic montage in which the speech of the heroes, the messages of the songs and repetition of visual and musical motifs are juxtaposed to create historical and ideological ambiguity. The specificity of this film is very close to later tendencies in using montage: the movement from a temporal understanding of montage to spatial montage in contemporary new media and 3D-movies. A new understanding of montage is also fruitful for the new interpretation of the chronotopical structure of narrative texts. The traditional theory of montage is rooted in classical literature, while new media experience opens up new possibilities for understanding mechanisms of montage. On a very general level, contemporary tendencies of montage can be analysed as chronotopical montage

Translation and semiotics

Translation and semiotic

Semiotics of cultural history

The interpretation of cultural history in the context of cultural semiotics, especially interpretation of semiotics of cultural history as a semiotics of culture, and semiotics of culture as a semiotics of cultural history, gives us, first, a deeper understanding of the analysability of cultural history and, at the same time, of the importance of history and different aspects of temporality for the semiotics of culture. Second, the history of the semiotics of culture, especially the semiotics of culture of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics, is an organic part of cultural history, while the self-presentation of the school via establishing explicit and implicit contacts with the heritage of Russian theory (the Formalist School, the Bakhtin circle, Vygotskij, Eisenstein etc) was already a semiotic activity and an object of the semiotics of cultural history. Third, the main research object of semiotics of culture is the hierarchy of the sign systems of culture and the existent as well as historical correlations between these sign systems. Such conceptualization of the research object of semiotics of culture turns the latter into a semiotics of cultural history. Emphasizing the semiotic aspect of cultural history can support the development of semiotics of culture in two ways. First, semiotics of culture has the potential of conducting more in-depth research of texts as mediators between the audience and the cultural tradition. Second, semiotics of culture as a semiotics of cultural history can be methodologically used for establishing a new (chronotopical) theory of culture

Semiotics of mediation. Theses

Semiotics of mediation is based on comparative analysis of mediation processes, on typology of forms of mediation and on the subsequent complementary analysis of culture. Not only does cultural analysis that is based on semiotics of mediation proceed from communication processes, it also searches for possibilities of correlation between concepts of describability, analysability, translatability. Depending on the strategy of mediation semiotics it is possible to create an overview of the main parameters of cultural analysis and to specify the boundaries of semiotic analysis of culture. The main types of mediation are simultaneously parameters of cultural analysis. The main types include autocommunicative mediation, metalingual mediation, intertextual mediation, interdiscursive mediation, and inter- or transmedial mediation. Typology of mediation types facilitates the understanding of the autocommunicative aspect of culture and creates the basis for analysing communication processes not on the level of the immediate sender and receiver but as part of the culture’s communication with itself. Semiotics of mediation starts from semiotic mediation and ends with a culture of mediation in which one and the same cultural language or text operates as a means of dialogue with itself, as a means of communication with others, as part of some textual system or discourse, or as a transmedial phenomenon. Semiotics of mediation is a means of studying the correlation between implicit semiotic mediation and forms of explicit semiotic mediation, thus complementing cultural semiotic study of culture

Text dynamics: Renewing challenges for semiotics of literature

The paper examines the problem of textual/cultural dynamics linked to the issue of semiotic literariness, to be further investigated by the authors in later papers on literary semiotics. This scientific project aims to get closer to reaching an adequate disciplinary identification for semiotics of literature and a relatively precise definition of the status of this field in relation to semiotics of culture. The first step for the project is to reveal the interrelationhip between text and culture using the notion of dynamics that can be reconstructed from a historical perspective through some essential components of Formalist and Structuralist theory (Tynyanov’s ‘function’, Jakobson’s ‘dominant’) and also works by Lotman (the ‘text–culture’ relationship) and Bakhtin (‘dialogue’). The notions of inclusiveness/integration, distancing and hierarchization, leading to transformation, are interpreted in some detail in the context of these theories. On these grounds, three basic categories of the analysability of textual/cultural dynamics are set up with the indication of further aspects of the dynamic function: (1) mediation; (2) transposition; (3) temporality–spatiality. The suggested classification and the implied conceptual segmentation are expected to contribute to a synthesis between “Structuralist” and Peircean theoretical and methodological orientations in semiotic literary studies. This also reveals the need for a coexistence of approaches (a) moving from particular cultural fields (literary culture tradition) towards general semiotics of culture, and (b) returning from universal transfield concepts to literary culture, including the historical traditions both in art (object-level) and its scientific interpretation (meta-level)

Yuri Lotman: scientist's inner speech

Статья представляет собой первое исследование наследия Лотмана, ставившего 169 автопортретов (личных записок или записок, адресованных самому себе?). Исследование сфокусировано только на тех текстах, которые отражают внутреннюю речь ученого не в черновиках научных статей, а в различных более или менее интимных текстах: в частных письмах самым близким людям, случайных записях, самоиронии. Рассмотрение автопортретов Лотмана в контексте времени позволяет нам увидеть процесс его личного познания и понимания себя. Взятые по отдельности, они могут быть восприняты как шутливые карикатуры, они образуют автомиф Лотмана и выражающий его мифопоэтический текст. Автопортреты Лотмана характеризуют своеобразную мифопоэтику этого мыслителя.The article is the first study on Lotman’s heritage, which left 169 self-portraits. It focuses only on those that reflect the scientist’s inner speech not in drafts of scientific articles, but in various more or less intimate texts: in private letters to those closest to him, but also on random pieces of paper. self-irony. When considering Lotman’s self-portraits on the time axis, the process of self-understanding and self-affirmation is verified. Taken separately, they can be perceived as playful caricatures, they form Lotman’s self-myth and the mythopoetic text that expresses it. Lotman’s self-portraits are characteristic of this thinker’s peculiar mythopoetics.O artigo é um primeiro estudo sobre a herança de Lotman, que deixou 169 autorretratos. Concentra-se apenas naqueles que refletem o discurso interior do cientista não em rascunhos de artigos científicos, mas em vários textos mais ou menos íntimos: em cartas particulares às pessoas mais próximas, mas também em pedaços de papel aleatórios. auto-ironia. Ao considerar os autorretratos de Lotman no eixo do tempo, verifica-se o processo de autocompreensão e autoafirmação. Tomados separadamente, eles podem ser percebidos como caricaturas lúdicas, formam o automito de Lotman e o texto mitopoético que o expressa. Os autorretratos de Lotman são característicos da peculiar mitopoética deste pensador

The institution of semiotics in Estonia

The article gives a historical overview of the institutional development of semiotics in Estonia during two centuries, and describes briefly its current status. The key characteristics of semiotics in Estonia include: (1) seminal role of two world-level classics of semiotics from the University of Tartu, Juri Lotman and Jakob von Uexküll; (2) the impact of Tartu–Moscow school of semiotics, with a series of summer schools in Kääriku in 1960s and the establishment of semiotic study of culture; (3) the publication of the international journal Sign Systems Studies, since 1964; (4) the development of biosemiotics, notably together with colleagues from Copenhagen; (5) teaching semiotics as a major in bachelor, master, and doctoral programs in the University of Tartu, since 1994; (6) a plurality of institutions — in addition to the Department of Semiotics in the University of Tartu, several supporting semiotic institutions have been established since 1990s; and (7) a wide scope of research in various branches of semiotics, including theoretical studies, empirical studies, and applied semiotics projects on governmental and other request