Introduction: Materiality and play as affective and embodied means of (un)knowing

Madeleine Campbell, Ricarda Vidal

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter (peer-reviewed)peer-review

Abstract

Concepts like experientiality, performativity and materiality suggest a paradigm shift in how the communication of meaning is understood in translation studies. Meaning is seen as being constructed in-the-moment through a multitude of semiotic channels, actively performed and experienced in material reality rather than passively transferred through language or represented by words. However, if no transfer of meaning takes place between texts or communicators, and if no representationality is recognized between word and sense or source and target, this reveals a considerable conceptual gap between the new experiential paradigm and many traditional conceptualizations of interlingual translation that may make these new perspectives difficult to adopt for the field at large. This chapter argues that ‘transfer’ and ‘representation’ can still be useful concepts in explaining translation as an experiential meaning construction process, as instances of both can be found in the realm of materiality. How a material text is distributed from one communicator to another is a form of transfer; how letters, words and other signs are identified from the text is a form of representation. Crucially, however, neither phenomenon directly involves meaning: meaning is constructed, not transferred or represented. Instead, shared semiotic conventions constrain communicators’ meaning construction from texts in comparable ways, creating an illusion of meaning being transferred and/or represented. Meaning cannot be directly conveyed through transfer or representation but the construction of meaning from material texts does involve both phenomena and recognizing that may help bridge the gap between traditional and alternative conceptualizations of translation.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Experience of Translation
Subtitle of host publicationMateriality and Play in Experiential Translation
EditorsMadeleine Campbell, Ricarda Vidal
Place of PublicationLondon
PublisherRoutledge
Pages1-18
Number of pages18
Edition1
ISBN (Electronic)9781003462538
ISBN (Print)9781032612010
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Apr 2024

Publication series

NameCreative, Social and Transnational Perspectives on Translation
PublisherRoutledge

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