The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
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Pirjo Kukkonen
Pirjo Kukkonen (b. 1949) is a professor at the University of Helsinki 〈pirjo.kukkonen@helsinki.fi 〉. Her research interests include language, literature, translation studies, and semiotics. Her publications includeDet sjungande jaget. Att översätta känslan och själen. Den lyriska samlingen Kanteletar i svenska tolkningar 1830–1989 [The singing I. Translating emotion and soul. The lyric collectionKanteletar in Swedish interpretations 1830–1989] (2009);Det översättandet jaget: homo significans – homo interpres [The translating subject: Homo significans – homo interpres] (2010).
Abstract
Victoria Welby's concept of translation is a vital point for all modes of translation. In translation studies, which is a discipline dealing with interpretation, understanding, and communication between signs and sign systems in two semiosic systems, in source and target languages, societies, and cultures, Welby's concept of translative thinking is a relevant starting point in semiotics and in translation as communication focusing on the “translator”/”interpreter.” This is true, not only in translation proper, that is, interlingual translation, but in all other modes of translation, including intralingual translation and intersemiosic translation. Translation is, literally, trans-position. Furthermore, translation as a cognitive process uses thought-signs in interpreting, understanding, and signifying. It will be argued that for Welby, translation is a polyfunctional tool to understand, to not misunderstand, and to promote the self-understanding of humankind. The translating subject is a signifying subject, a homo interpres and a homo significans, dealing with the never ending sign process of semiosis. Moreover, the method of translation is a tool for the mind and for reasoning with thought-signs, for the dialogue between source and target languages in translation proper, or for intersemiotic translation between all types of sign systems in understanding life-signs, texts, societies, and cultures. In existential semiotics, the subject, the “I,” and “the Self” with the semiotic modalities are the very core. The translating subject is also a semioethic subject, a signifying subject, dealing with sense, meaning, and significance from an axiological point of view. Welby's concept of translation not only covers the interpretative-cognitive aspect of knowledge in the process of gaining new knowledge, and testing knowledge, but it covers the very idea of human thinking in the universe of discourse.
About the author
Pirjo Kukkonen (b. 1949) is a professor at the University of Helsinki 〈pirjo.kukkonen@helsinki.fi〉. Her research interests include language, literature, translation studies, and semiotics. Her publications include Det sjungande jaget. Att översätta känslan och själen. Den lyriska samlingen Kanteletar i svenska tolkningar 1830–1989 [The singing I. Translating emotion and soul. The lyric collection Kanteletar in Swedish interpretations 1830–1989] (2009); Det översättandet jaget: homo significans – homo interpres [The translating subject: Homo significans – homo interpres] (2010).
©[2013] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
- Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli
- The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs
- Mother sense and the image schema of the gift
- Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond
- Science: The question of its limits
- Susan Petrilli's archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry
- The “dialogue” between Victoria Lady Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin – Reading Susan Petrilli's Signifying and Understanding
- Christine Ladd-Franklin's and Victoria Welby's correspondence with Charles Peirce
- Tracing signs of a developing science: On the correspondence between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce
- Signs, senses and cognition: Lady Welby and contemporary semiotics
- Space and time: Continuity in the correspondence between Charles Peirce and Victoria Welby
- Significs and semiotics: Chronicle of an encounter foretold
- Hic et nunc: Evidence from canine zoosemiotics
- Lady Welby: Significs and the interpretive mind
- The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
- Semiosis and intersemiotic translation
- Signs, translation, and life in the Bakhtin circle and in Welby's significs
- Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects
- The sense, meaning, and significance of the Twin International Covenants on Political and Economic Rights
- Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
- Mysticism and mind in Welby's significs
- On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
- Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
- Lady Welby and logic
- Willing science – observing nature: Welby and Latour lift the veil
- In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
- The aphasic utterance: A significal perspective
- The articulate music of language in The King's Speech
- Applying significs
- Presentation: Two texts at the beginning of a research itinerary. From significs to semioethics
- Theory of meaning and theory of knowledge: Vailati and Welby
- Sign and meaning in Victoria Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin: A confrontation
- Early recognitions of Welby's significs and the movement it inspired in the Netherlands
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Introduction
- Lady Welby and Lady Petrilli
- Victoria Lady Welby – A pioneer of semiotic thought rediscovered by Susan Petrilli
- The life of significance: Cultivating ingenuity no less than signs
- Mother sense and the image schema of the gift
- Signification, common knowledge, and womanhood: The significs of Lady Victoria Welby and beyond
- Science: The question of its limits
- Susan Petrilli's archival research on Victoria Welby and its implications for future scholarly inquiry
- The “dialogue” between Victoria Lady Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin – Reading Susan Petrilli's Signifying and Understanding
- Christine Ladd-Franklin's and Victoria Welby's correspondence with Charles Peirce
- Tracing signs of a developing science: On the correspondence between Victoria Lady Welby and Charles S. Peirce
- Signs, senses and cognition: Lady Welby and contemporary semiotics
- Space and time: Continuity in the correspondence between Charles Peirce and Victoria Welby
- Significs and semiotics: Chronicle of an encounter foretold
- Hic et nunc: Evidence from canine zoosemiotics
- Lady Welby: Significs and the interpretive mind
- The translating and signifying subject as homo interpres and homo significans: Victoria Welby's concept of translation – a polyfunctional tool
- Semiosis and intersemiotic translation
- Signs, translation, and life in the Bakhtin circle and in Welby's significs
- Significs and mathematics: Creative and other subjects
- The sense, meaning, and significance of the Twin International Covenants on Political and Economic Rights
- Significal Designs: Translating for meanings that truly matter
- Mysticism and mind in Welby's significs
- On the translatability of liturgical texts: A significal perspective
- Money and metaphor in Welby Prize winner F. Tönnies' “Philosophical terminology”: Some critical considerations
- Lady Welby and logic
- Willing science – observing nature: Welby and Latour lift the veil
- In search of the other: Reading Victoria Welby's significs
- The aphasic utterance: A significal perspective
- The articulate music of language in The King's Speech
- Applying significs
- Presentation: Two texts at the beginning of a research itinerary. From significs to semioethics
- Theory of meaning and theory of knowledge: Vailati and Welby
- Sign and meaning in Victoria Welby and Mikhail Bakhtin: A confrontation
- Early recognitions of Welby's significs and the movement it inspired in the Netherlands
