Enigma: Aspects of Multimodal Inter-Semiotic Translation

Abstract

Commercial and creative perspectives are critical when making movies. Deciding how to select and combine elements of stories gleaned from books into multimodal texts results in films whose modes of image, words, sound and movement interact in ways that create new wholes and so, new stories, which are more than the sum of their individual parts. The Imitation Game (2014) claims to be based on a true story recorded in the seminal biography by Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (1983). The movie, as does its primary source, endeavours to portray the crucial role of Enigma during World War Two, along with the tragic fate of a key individual, Alan Turing. The film, therefore, involves translation of at least two "true" stories, making the film a rich source of data for this paper that addresses aspects of multimodal inter-semiotic translations (MISTs). Carefully selected aspects of tales based on "true stories" are interpreted in films; however, not all interpretations possess the same degree of integrity in relation to their original source text. This paper assumes films, based on stories, are a form of MIST, whose integrity of translation needs to be assessed. The methodology employed uses a case-study approach and a "grid" framework with two key critical thinking (CT) standards: Accuracy and Significance, as well as a scale (from "low" to "high"). This paper offers a stretched and nuanced understanding of inter-semiotic translation by analysing how multimodal strategies are employed by communication interpretants.

Towards a More Inclusive Museum: Developing Multi-Sensory Approaches to the Visual Arts for Visually Impaired Audiences

“…Findings made in this doctoral research have the potential to fill a gap in the literature which addresses sight translations (Čeňková 2010;Cross 2016) such as audio description (Taylor, 2013) and translating visual arts into tactile objects (Juricevic, 2009). The literature on multimodal translation has barely touched on the potential of multi-sensory representations of paintings developed through a participatory approach in dialogue with individuals with visual impairments.…”

“…Although traditional forms of translation usually focus on one single sense, like sight or hearing, intersemiotic translations tend to be multimodal in nature. Among these, sight translation, also known as "prima vista"-such as American Sign Language-is a mode of simultaneous interpreting that translates an oral language into a visual one, and vice versa (Čeňková 2010;Cross 2016). This type of translation can also include audio description which is typically aimed at visually impaired audiences (Taylor 2013).…”

La traducción de masculinidades gay en la teleficción: análisis multimodal del doblaje latinoamericano y peninsular de la serie de televisión Looking

“…Asimismo, dicho vínculo puede rastrearse hasta el influjo inicial de la semiótica en la traducción de la mano de la clasificación triádica de Jakobson (1959): traducción interlingüística, intralingüística e intersemiótica. Esta última, definida inicialmente como «an interpretation of verbal signs by a means of nonverbal sign systems» (Jakobson, 1959, p. 233), ha sido un concepto recurrente en estudios de traducción enfocados, entre muchos otros temas, en la publicidad (Smith, 2008;Torresi, 2008), las adaptaciones y los remakes de películas (Cross, 2016;Evans, 2014), la literatura experimental (Lee, 2013(Lee, , 2014, la literatura infantil (Echauri-Galván, 2020), la audiodescripción (Szarkowska & Orero, 2014), los productos transmedia (Okulska, 2016). La traducción intersemiótica también ha servido para establecer nuevos vínculos interdisciplinares entre la semiótica y la traducción (Cosculluela, 2003;Gorlee, 2010), entre los que se desarrollan propuestas de análisis aplicables a la relación entre aspectos icónicos y verbales de los textos (Damaskinidis, 2015) o la relación entre esculturas originales y copiadas de la época clásica (Anderson & Lotman, 2018), así como propuestas teóricas sobre las nuevas textualidades provistas por las tecnologías (Sütiste & Torop, 2007) o sobre cómo interpretar la relación entre texto fuente y texto meta desde una perspectiva semiótica (Petrilli & Ponzio, 2019).…”