The Notion of Code in Semiotics and Semiotically Informed Translation Studies

What is it about?

The term code is largely used in the fields of Linguistics, Semiotics, and Translation Studies, but not in a consistent manner. Translation scholars seem to use this term through a semiotic perspective that connote the complexity of the translation process. This complexity has to do with the transition from one cultural structure to another, a transition that led to coining terms such as equiva-lence, correspondence, etc. Theorists of translation, in their effort to explain the epistemological character of translation, related translation process to adjacent disciplines such as linguistics, theory of communication and semiotics, where the term code is a key-term. The same term is used in a different way by semioticians. In this article I will attempt to answer to two questions namely: how does Roman Jakobson, in his seminal essay on translation, approach the concept of the code’s meaning, and, what do semioticians and semiotically informed translation scholars mean or imply with the use of the concept of code.

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