Semiotics Development And Translation Studies

Modern semiotics, the study of how people use and interpret signs, is indebted to the insights of C. S. Peirce and F. de Saussure. It has developed into an independent discipline and exerted great influence to many social and humanism studies, and has a methodological function in many art subjects. Translation study based on semiotics has become a new domain of thought along with linguistics, philosophy, aesthetics, psychology, and sociology.On the basis of the study of development of semiotics and the role it has played in translation theory and practice, this dissertation reveals how the ideas in semiotics inspire researchers in interpreting the textual meaning in wider relationships, and expand the scopes of translation studies.No holistic study of translation can exclude semiotics as a fundamental discipline in encoding and decoding signs. Saussure's theory about semiotics defines human languages as sign systems with common characteristics, which confirms the translatability. Translating is thus regarded as the message transition between two semiotic systems, it consists in reproducing the target language the closest natural equivalence of the source language message, firstly in terms of content, and secondly in terms of form. Thereby the emphasis of translation studies has been laid on the source text.General semiotics covers the study of the nonverbal sign as well as the verbal sign and puts the language user and the outside world into the sign process. It discloses that the sign is not only the combination of signified and signifier, it also includes the user's interpretation in a specific context, so we can start from the fixed denotation and revise or enrich the sign system. Directed by general semiotics, translators can understand the language from the standpoint of the social structure and process. Translation is defined as the code transformation in the sociocultural system, shifting the center from the source text to the readership and the act of enunciation.In literary semiotic system, decoding alone cannot solve the hermeneuticproblem, so literary translation must be manipulated with the aid of literary semiotics as well as linguistic semiotics and general semiotics. The decisive frame of reference for literary translation is not an optimal input /output relationship, but semantic, metaphorical, and stylistic creativity. Meanwhile, translator must leave enough hermeneutic space to allow readers to comprehend the implication of the source text by making full use of their imagination and artistic creativity. The theory turns to the translator, and stresses the reading of the reflective translators and readers.