On Linguistic Aspects of Translation

Abstract

Roman Jakobson’s 1959 essay offers a semiotic reflection on translatability. He conceives of meaning, not as a reference to reality, but as a relation to a potentially endless chain of signs. He describes translation as a process of recoding which “involves two equivalent messages in two different codes,” and he distinguishes between three different kinds of translation: “intralingual,” “interlingual,” and “intersemiotic.” He is mindful of the differences among cultural discourses, especially poetry, where “grammatical categories carry a high semantic import” and which therefore requires translation that is a “creative transposition” into a different system of signs.

Cite this

Roman Jakobson (1959). On Linguistic Aspects of Translation. Harvard University Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674731615.c18

@article{roman1959on,
  title  = {On Linguistic Aspects of Translation},
  author = {Jakobson, Roman},
  year   = {1959},
  journal = {Harvard University Press eBooks},
  doi    = {10.4159/harvard.9780674731615.c18}
}

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