Cognitive distortion, translation distortion and poetic distortion as semiotic shifts

Abstract

Both interlingual translation shifts and poetic production can be seen from a semiotic perspective in terms of mental filtering. The shared ground of the three processes - cognition, translation, versification - is to be found in the semiotic perspective: signs (prototext, reality, perception) are interpreted and worked through (mind, interpretants, cognition) and give as an output an object (metatext, poem, worldview). By trying to classify the shifts resulting from such processes - distortions - with a semiotically shared grid of categories, the hypothesis is that the categories themselves - already existing within the separate fields - can be reciprocally fine-tuned. The very notion of “shift” - derived from translation criticism, and in particular from the prototext-metatext comparison - becomes in this hypothesis a connection transforming the shifts possible in the other mentioned fields into mutual benchmarks.

Translation as Metaphor, the Translator as Anthropologist

“…Readers do understand, that is the reason why they read. For this reason, the translator's mediation should be strictly cultural, not cognitive (Osimo 2017). Unless the customer has explicitly asked for a simplification of the text -for example when the prototext is a scientific paper and the metatext is a popular science story in a newspaper -there should never be the -even unconscious -thought that, since they supposedly cannot understand something, it's better to simplify or explain.…”

Kaip Į Lietuvių Kalbą Verčiami Angliški Kalambūrai

“…Daugelis vertimo teoretikų mano, kad tokių metatekstinių priemonių, siejamų su žodžių žaismo vertimu, apskritai reikia vengti, jas laiko vertėjo silpnybės ar pasidavimo apraiška (pvz., žr. Osimo 2004). Anot Umberto Eko (Umberto Eco), vertėjo pastaba išnašoje yra ultima ratio, paskutinė priemonė, kurios imdamasis jis pripažįsta arba patvirtina savo nesėkmę.…”