1. PHILOSOPHY AND SEMIOTICS OF TRANSLATION
Lecture I

2. 2. Code Variation and Code Switching 3. Language and Culture
Contents
1. Types of Code and Modes
2. Code Variation and Code Switching
3. Language and Culture
4. Types of Translation
5. Decoding and Recoding
6. Loss and Gain
7. Untranslatability

3. 1. Types of Code and Modes
Translation belongs to semiotics , the science that studies sign systems or structures, sign processes and sign functions.
Semiotics is concerned with the study of semiotic (sign) systems (codes) of which the primary place in the human communication is held by natural language.
Types of codes:
-regulatory codes controlling behavior;
-analogue codes and digital codes;
-presentational codes such as behavioral, commodity, genetically produced, and codes which produce texts which transform presentational codes;
-denotational and connotational codes.
Working together these codes can ensure the desired congruity (appropriateness) of text and situation, the opposite case is incongruity or ‘register clash’.

4. Regional, social and idiolect variations.
2.Code Variation and Code Switching
Standard variety (Standard British or American English). Standard variety is associated with the highest status in the community because it is based on speech of the highest social classes and educated people , it is used in media and literature, taught in schools and to foreign learners.
Regional, social and idiolect variations.
There is a certain degree of predictability in the code selection since the choice of code is motivated by the purpose, situation, characteristics of interlocutors (age, education, ethnic background).
At particular periods of time societies can use several varieties with specialized functions (diglossia-’high’vs.’low’varity and their members may mater more than one variety (bilingualism).

5. 3. Language and Culture
The translation involves the transfer of meaning contained in one set of language signs into another set of language signs through competent use of the dictionary and grammar. This process also involves a whole set of extra-linguistic criteria.
Edward Sapir claims that ‘language is a guide to social reality’ and that human beings are at the mercy of the language that has become the medium of expression for their society. Experience is determined by the language habits of a community and each separate structure represents a separate reality.
Benjamin Lee Whorf, Juri Lotman.
‘No language can exist unless it is steeped in the context of culture; and no culture can exist which does not have at its center the structure of natural language.’

6. 4. Types of Translation
Roman Jacobson in his book ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’ distinguishes three types of translation:
-Intralingual translation or rewording (an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language);
Interlingual translation or translation proper (an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of some other language);
Intersemiotic translation or transmutation ( an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign system).

7. 5. Decoding and Recoding
Semiotic transformations are the replacements of the signs encoding a message by signs of another code preserving invariant information with respect to the given system of reference.
The question of semiotic transformation can be illustrated by the translation of a simple noun such as English ‘butter’. Following Saussure , the structural relationship between the signified (signifie) or concept of ‘butter’ and the signifier (significant) or the sound image made by the word ‘butter’ constitutes the linguistic sign ‘butter’.
Syntagmatic (horisontal) relations and associative (paradigmatic or vertical) relations..

8. 6. Loss and Gain
There are no isomorphic languages that’s why the problem of loss and gain in translation is very actual. Eugine Nida is a rich source of information about the problems of loss in translation, in particular about the difficulties encountered by the translator when faced with terms or concepts in the SL that do not exist in the TL. He cites the case of Guaica, a language of southern Venezuella, where there is little trouble in finding satisfactory terms for the English ‘murder’, ‘stealing’,’ lying’ etc., but where the terms for ‘good’,’bad’,’ugly’ and ‘beautiful’ cover a very different area of meaning. For example, ‘Good’ includes desirable food, killing enemies, chewing dope in moderation, putting fire to one’s wife to teach her to obey, and stealing from anyone not belonging to the same band.

9. ‘bad’ includes rotten fruit, any object with a blemish, murdering a person of the same band, stealing from a member of the same family and lying to anyone.
Violating ‘taboo’ includes incest, being too close to one’s mother-in-law, a married woman’s eating tapir before the birth of the first child, and a child’s eating rodents.
In European languages there are also such kinds of differentiation. In the Finnish language we can find many variants of terms for ‘snow’, in Arabic for ‘camel’, in English for ‘light’ and ‘water’ in French for types of bread. All these problems are the source of loss and gain. Sometimes it is necessary to add something in translation , that is ‘gain’ sometimes it is necessary to delete something in translation that is ‘loss’.

10. 7. Untranslatability
When the difficulties are uncounted by translator the whole issue of the translatability of the text is raised. Catford distinguishes two types of untranslatability: linguistic and cultural. On the linguistic level untranslatability occurs when there is no lexical or syntactical substitute in the TL for the SL. Ex. German’ In wieviel Uhr darf man Sie morgen wecken?’ is linguistically untranslatable because there is no such a structure in the English language. The translator should present the translation which accords with the English language.' What time would you like to be woken tomorrow?’ Cultural untranslatabiliy is connected with cultural differences.

11. As an example Catford says that more abstract items such as the English terms home and democracy can present some difficulties in translation. If, for example, the phrase is spoken by an American resident temporarily in London, it could either imply a return to his private home or return across the Atlantic to America. It depends on the context in which this phrase is used.
With the translation of democracy further complexities arise. This term is largely present in many languages. And ,although, it may be relatable to different political situations , the context will guide the reader to select the appropriate situational features. Each reader has a concept of this term based on his or her cultural context. If we take , for example, some sentences with the word democratic we can see that the meanings differ.

12. Ex. The American Democratic Party
- the democratic republic
- the democratic wing of the British Conservative party
Thus, we see that the use of the term in different contexts differs. If culture is perceived as ‘dynamic’ then the terminology of social structuring must be ‘dynamic’ too. J.Lotman points out that the semiotic study of culture not only considers culture functioning as a system of signs but it also shows that the relation of culture to the sign and to signification comprises of its basic typological features.
The famous Russian semiotician and translator Popovici doesn’t distinguish between linguistic and cultural untranslatability. He also speaks about two types of untranslatability. The first is defined as a situation in which the linguistic elements of the original cannot be replaced

13. adequately in structural, linear and functional or semantic terms in a case of a lack of denotation or connotation.
The second type goes beyond the purely linguistic. It means a situation where the relation of expressing the meaning ,i.e. the relation between the creative subject and its linguistic expression in the original doesn’t find an adequate linguistic expression in the translation.
This second type illustrates the difficulties of describing and defining the limits of translatability because the author starts from a position that involves a theory of literary communication.
Thus Popovici comes to the following conclusions:
- Personal experience in its uniquence is untranslatable;
-In theory the base units of any two languages are not always comparable;
Communication is possible when account is taken of the respective situations of speaker and listener or author and reader.

14. Translation may always start with the clearest situations, the most concrete messages, the most elementary universals. But as it involves the consideration of a language in its entirety, together with its most subjective messages, through an examination of common situations and multiplication of contacts that need clarifying, then there is no doubt that communication through translation can never be completely finished, which also demonstrates that it is never wholly impossible either.
It is clearly the task of a translator to find a solution to even the most daunting of problems. The translator's decision is in itself a creative act. The intuitive element in translation is also very important. The process of translation has also the pragmatic aspect.

15. Translation theory tends to be normative, to instruct translators on the optimal solution; actual translation work, however, is pragmatic; the translator resolves for that one of the possible solution which promises a maximum of effect with a minimum of effort. That is , we can say that the translator intuitively resolves for the so called MINIMAX Strategy.