Hortus Semioticus 13 / 2026 — Foreword

This special issue is the product of an ongoing dialogue between the Department of Translation Studies, and the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu, as well as between the esteemed colleagues at the Hortus Semioticus editorial board and me. The idea of dedicating a special issue focusing on semiotics and translation first occurred to us following the round table discussion, “Intersemiotic Translation: An Invitation to Connect Translation Studies and Semiotics” at our university, which I co-organised and moderated. We had the chance to bring together both departments with the valuable participation of Peeter Torop and Elin Sütiste from the Department of Semiotics, and Luc van Doorslaer from the Department of Translation Studies, including two (then) PhD students – Zarja Vršič from the University of Ljubljana, who now conducts her research at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, and Manuel Moreno Tovar from the University of Tartu, who currently works as a translator at the European Commission. This discussion in 2023 was followed by another one in 2024 with the visit of the Fulbright scholar Brian J. Baer from Kent State University, with his 4-part lecture series “Translation Studies and Semiotics: New Trajectories”, organised by Luc van Doorslaer.  

Both events generated highly positive feedback, and the responses we received from colleagues across the two departments, as well as from MA and PhD students, were overwhelmingly supportive. This encouraged us to go further and organise a 3-day PhD research seminar “Methodologies in city translation research”, which was a project co-funded by the European Union. The team for the seminar consisted of Luc van Doorslaer, Tiit Remm, and myself representing the University of Tartu, with Daniele Monticelli from Tallinn University and Sherry Simon from Concordia University. Together, we engaged with participants through a series of lectures, seminars, a research visit to the Tartu City Museum, and a concluding workshop. Adjacent to the main theoretical, conceptual, and methodological findings, a meta-conclusion I had gathered from this event was the growing interest in translation from different perspectives. I can say that this has been the key moment in my dialogue with Hortus Semioticus to prepare the special issue “Semiotics and Translation”. 

For scholars interested in communication, culture, language, society, and all the sub-systems that connect each of these broader systems to one another, it is impossible to consider semiotics and translation independently and in isolation from each other. As we have also mentioned in our call for papers for this issue, even before the institutionalisation of both disciplines, signs and how they are translated have played a crucial role in centuries-long discussions. For example, when we look at St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, his distinction between “word-for-word” and “sense-for-sense” translation offers a strong example of how translation can be viewed within the framework of signs, where the target unit of translation functions as a signifier, remaining to be decided whether the translation will be literal or cultural. In his Letter to Pammachius, he defends his point of view by explaining that he has “transferred not the words, but the meaning” while translating the Bible (St. Jerome in Venuti 2012: 24). Additionally, although we know that St. Augustine wrote a letter to St. Jerome about his discontent regarding Jerome’s lexical choices (cf. Takács 2019) and that they quarreled from time to time (cf. Norris 2003: 386), in his work De Doctrina Christiana  (On Christian Doctrine), St. Augustine’s concept of signs also play a central role in the interpretation and translation of sacred texts. In the context of biblical translation, for instance, Augustine emphasised that translation was not merely the literal conversion of words but the interpretation of signs that conveyed divine meaning. His exegesis was based on the difference between the literal word and its “higher” meaning (Norris 2003: 392) “for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (Corinthians 2, 3:6). As becomes clear, debates on translation and meaning, or the literal meaning of a word versus how it functions as a sign (which inevitably entails a semiotic dimension) are far older than the institutionalisation of semiotics and translation studies (TS) as academic disciplines. 

With the institutionalisation of these disciplines, specifically from the 20th century and onwards, we see more concrete examples of how semiotics and translation studies converge. Roman Jakobson’s essay “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959), which is a seminal text that can be regarded as a bridging perspective that makes use of both semiotics and TS is still actively referred to by multiple scholars around the world, which also gives us the famous distinction between interlingual, intralingual, and intersemiotic translation. After that, more “bridging” figures emerge between TS and semiotics, who focused on how to conceptualise translation, and came up with their own typology or taxonomies, such as Umberto Eco’s approach in Experiences in Translation (2000) that focuses on translation between cultures, or Susan Petrilli’s typology in Translation Translation (2001) which suggests that translation extends beyond a language-based phenomenon to encompass the biosemiosphere where “intersemiosic translation” – across sign systems – and “endosemiosic translation” – internal to a single sign system – occur (Petrilli 2003: 19). Moreover, we can also add to this list Henrik Gottlieb’s comprehensive taxonomy, where he makes a distinction between “conventionalised translation” and “adaptational translation” as applied to his own conceptualisation of intersemiotic and intrasemiotic translation based on semiotic equivalence (Gottlieb 2008: 43-44). Among those bridging figures, it is also important to mention Dinda L. Gorlée who explored the relationship between translation, meaning, and semiotics by examining how texts and translations are understood through signs. Drawing on Peirce’s semiotic categories, she highlighted the dynamic nature of translated signs and underscored the crucial role of translation in the process of semiosis (cf. Gorlée 2004). 

The important point here is to keep in mind that while scholars in semiotics tended to focus on broad conceptualisations of translation (i.e., not limited to interlingual transfer), scholars in TS also recognised the need to expand approaches to translation. The “cultural turn” in TS – among many other “turns” such as the “sociological turn”, “technological turn” etc. – in the 1980s and 1990s is a great example of this, which foregrounded culture, social context, and translator subjectivity, shifting the discipline from a linguistic focus to a broader cultural and methodological framework, which can be seen primarily in the works of Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere (cf. Yan and Huang 2014). This allowed TS to further explore different topics which also included nonverbal communication. As suggested by van Doorslaer and McMartin, “[d]ecoupling translation from its ‘original’ source (con)text inevitably requires researchers to account for social, political and cultural aspects of the translating culture, where the contexts of production and reception in which a translation must come into being and meaningfully function are radically different from those of the source text” (2022: 2). Thanks to this perspective, whose impact is still actively predominant in TS today, it is possible to look into various topics such as literary translation, gender-based translation, postcolonial translation, and so on. As Ning formulated “cultural diversity in the age of globalisation is significantly more pronounced than cultural convergence as a direct consequence of such cultural location and relocation. In this respect, translation has been playing a leading role: as a mediator and translator between different cultures” (Ning 2024: 165).  

In fact, when we look at the root of the word “translation”, which is derived from the Latin ‘translatio’ – meaning “carrying across” or “bringing across” (Kasparek 1983: 83), we can claim that – at least from the perspectives of the languages that still use the derivates of this term such as English translation, French traduction, Spanish traducción, Italian traduzione, etc. – translation has always been a broad concept that transcended language. The expansion of translation beyond the interlingual and the intercultural is in fact a return to the way in which translation was understood in medieval times, encompassing all kinds of spatial and temporal transfers with an emphasis on process (Watson 2008; and Blumczynski 2023 quoted in Gambier, van Doorslaer forthcoming). This also raises the question of how much more tolerant ancient scholars might have been toward certain contemporary topics discussed today such as city translation, museum translation, or biotranslation, etc., compared with, for instance, seventeenth-century scholars who saw the necessity in “strict literalism, the word-by-word matching of the interlingual dictionary, of the foreign-language primer, of the interlinear crib” (Steiner 1975: 266 quoted in Drößiger 2020: 249). I feel the need to mention this here as the question whether the concept of translation is broadened so much that almost everything could be considered as translational is still discussed in TS circles today.  

For example, as a researcher (and perhaps taking advantage of my double background in TS and semiotics), I find myself taking semiotics as a stronghold for justifying why I suggest, for instance, that the physical manifestation of architectural intent into exhibition halls in the forms of corridors, clusters of artifacts, or lighting is translation in a TS-oriented paper (cf. Mertens and van Doorslaer 2024). I am surely not the first person to discuss these matters, as such debates have been going on for decades, and I definitely will not be the last. To put it short, and as suggested by Vidal Claramonte (2022), TS needs semiotics. That being said, we also need to consider the other way around: Semiotics needs TS. Let me clarify why: Given that from a Peircean perspective, no sign can be “without an interpretant, that is, without another sign that translates it” (Petrilli 2016: 23), we can easily reach the conclusion that in our universe that is composed of signs, “translation is everywhere” (ibid.). Alternatively, if we take a Lotmanian perspective and argue that being able to differentiate the self from the other is already translation, then we reach the conclusion that everything that considers life, perception, and cognition naturally concerns translation, hence translation is (almost) everything. Following that, I inevitably think of the question “[i]f ‘translation’ means everything and nothing, what would be its usefulness, relevance or ability to solve real-world problems?” (Gambier, Nouss forthcoming). This is the exact point where I believe semiotics needs TS just like TS needs semiotics. While semiotics can help us see translation in parallel with our symbolic capacity as humanity and highlight the universal value of translation as a reflection of being able to differentiate on an ontological level, TS comes in more handy when we delve into the practical specificities of what we can concretely produce as the result of our symbolic capacity, and what place these products hold on a pragmatic level in compact and local systems rather than a universal one.  

I also should emphasise that while being similar enough to accommodate each other’s theoretical and conceptual demands, and to provide each other with novel and useful perspectives, these disciplines are neither interchangeable nor fully equivocal. Therefore, our readers are invited throughout this special issue to discover the convergences and divergences for themselves. While discovering these possibilities, let us also remember Petrilli’s suggestion that semiotics and TS differ from each other; however, these “two different disciplines are intent upon exploring the same process, i.e. that of semiosis, of the infinite deferral among signs” (Petrilli 2015: 97), which is a point we would like to emphasise with this special issue. After all, “in our world–human, cultural and natural–which is a world of signs, translation is omnipresent” (Petrilli 2016: 23). 

It would be beyond the scope of this short editor’s introduction to mention and discuss in detail all the important works in both semiotics and TS that have contributed to the ongoing discussion regarding the convergences and divergences of the disciplines, nor is it a realistic task to list all the possible ways to look at translation and its conceptualisations in connection with seminal theories that we can discover not only in semiotics and TS but also in adjacent disciplines such as anthropology, communication, media studies, literary studies, etc. However, in connection with the paragraphs above (that reflect no more than a fraction of all the possible discussions we can have regarding the theme of the special issue), I would like to introduce the four research articles that we are presenting to our readers, as well as two interviews and two book reviews. 

The first article, “The image of Russia in Charlie Hebdo: A semiotic and imagological analysis” opens the special issue with a topic that is quite relevant in current European politics. Ana Muñoz Macias examines how Charlie Hebdo has represented Russia before and after the invasion of Ukraine, and she compares the two periods to identify shifts in stereotypes and imagery. The author combines imagology and semiotics as her theoretical framework, which helps her analyse how linguistic and visual signs construct and circulate ideological narratives about Russia, thereby shaping public perception through media discourse. 

In contrast with Muñoz Macias’s case study approach, Betül Çanakpınar and Hazel Tansuyu continue the discussion on a more theoretical level and pose the question: “Is transmedia storytelling a kind of intersemiotic translation?” through their article. They examine how stories unfold across multiple media platforms while maintaining meaning through the use of signs. They argue that intersemiotic translation is not merely complementary but essential to the understanding of transmedia storytelling, highlighting the ways in which narrative and meaning are co-constructed across different media. 

The third article also tackles intersemiotic translation and transmedia, yet this time applied to a specific example. Namely, Spyridon Karpouzis explores the transformation process from print to podcast in his article “Intersemiotic translation and emotional affect: Nostalgia in the transmedial adaptation of George Seferis’s Days into podcast form”. He highlights intersemiotic translation as a process that transfers both informational and emotional content across media. Focusing on nostalgia, he analyses how adaptive strategies such as music, dramatised readings, and archival materials activate cultural memory, demonstrating how transmedial formats can creatively repurpose literary texts while shaping affective experiences. 

Last, but not least, Mariia Korniietska brings an original perspective to the investigation of artistic strategies by making use of a framework composed of zoo/ecosemiotics and the semiotics of hybridity. Her article “Translating the animal: Hybrid lives in the fiction of Ukrainian artist Yevgenia Belorusets” examines how Belorusets uses literary and photographic media to translate between human and animal perspectives, exploring hybrid forms and cross-species consciousness. Korniietska argues that Belorusets’ work challenges anthropocentric assumptions, reshaping cultural perceptions of the non-human and positioning contemporary art as a space for ecological and semiotic experimentation. 

As can be seen, through these four articles, our special issue attempts to bring together both theoretical and practical research, which focuses on various (but complementary) topics such as stereotypes in public discourse, cultural representation, contemporary art, adaptive strategies, storytelling, cultural memory, hybridity, and all in connection with imagology, intersemiotic translation, transmediality, and biotranslation. At this point, I believe that a further understanding of these topics can be facilitated by the lecture of the two interviews we include in our special issue, one with Peeter Torop, and the other with Eléa Pertusati, Gabriel Matthew Bergman, Kobus Marais, and Kalevi Kull.  

The first interview between Peeter Torop and Katre Pärn explores the development of his concept of total translation, tracing its roots in intertextuality, adaptation, and semiotic analysis across literature, film, and transmedial forms. Torop reflects on the methodological and practical challenges of translating not only language but also media, signs, and cultural references, emphasising the dual orientation of translation toward both a deep understanding of the source and clarity for the audience. The interview positionstranslation as a multidimensional process, and further underscores the intrinsic link between translation and culture: translation functions as a vehicle for connecting cultural texts, mediating collective memory, and consolidating knowledge across media and disciplines, highlighting how the formation of meaning is central to both semiotics and cultural processes. 

Our readers will notice that the concept of total translation that is discussed in this interview brings a holistic and efficient perspective that helps us look into the abovementioned topics in detail. Simultaneously, it is possible to start with the conceptual, methodological, and practical questions regarding translation and semiotics, and end up with thoughts on “the core phenomenon of meaning-making”, as discussed in the second interview with Eléa Pertusati, Gabriel Matthew Bergman, Kobus Marais, and Kalevi Kull. In this discussion, translation is highlighted as a fundamental semiotic phenomenon in connection with semiosis, and it is considered as an aspect of existence rather than a bounded process or object. According to the interview, translation can function as a constitutive dimension of semiosis itself, hence it appears as a dynamic feature of meaning-making rather than a discrete activity that can be isolated or localised. What stood out the most for me was the point where translation was taken as the “energy of the semiosphere”, emerging from opposition, constraint, and difference, arising from relationality and contradiction. I have no doubt that this interview is going to be enlightening to the readers who wish to question the nature and boundaries of translation through the lens of perception, cognition, and cultural formation.  

We end the special issue with two book reviews. The book Translation, Semiotics, and Feminism: Selected Writings of Barbara Godard (edited by Eva C. Karpinski and Elena Basile, 2023) is reviewed by Sebastián Nabón Hernández. The reviewer presents the volume as a reparative and archival project that restores Barbara Godard’s central role in feminist translation theory and semiotics, highlighting her Deleuzian rethinking of translation as a political, ethical, and creative process that challenges patriarchal notions of equivalence and fixed meaning. Lastly, in her review of Translation and Objects: Rewriting Migrancy and Displacement through the Materiality of Art (Carmen África Vidal Claramonte, 2024), Birgit Ületoa highlights how Vidal conceptualises translation as a material and affective practice by showing how migrants’ valued objects are “translated” through contemporary art, praising the book’s interdisciplinary narrative weaving.  

With the Hortus Semiotics special issue “Semiotics and Translation”, we hope to have made our small contribution to Torop’s suggestion in his interview that “[w]e need universal thinkers who can consolidate collaboration across fields”. I would like to end my words here by thanking the peer reviewers who have contributed to the preparation of the research articles with their invaluable evaluations and suggestions, as well as the entire Hortus Semioticus editorial team, with an emphasis on Nelly Mäekivi, Katre Pärn, Mark Mets, Gabriel Matthew Bergman, and Vivien Reinhold who facilitated the proof reading, copy-editing, and translation processes. Lastly, I would like to specifically thank my dear friend and colleague Andrew Mark Creighton who worked as much as I did for the preparation of this special issue, as without his efforts, it would not be possible to finalise the issue. 

References

Blumczynski, Piotr 2023. Experiencing Translationality: Material and Metaphorical Journeys. London: Routledge. 

Drößiger, Hans-Harry 2020. After Babel Revisited: On language and Translation. In Memoriam George Steiner (1929–2020). Athens Journal of Philology 7(4): 235–256. 

Gambier, Yves; Nouss, Alexis Forthcoming. Postlude. In: Gambier, Yves; Van Doorslaer, Luc (eds.), Border Crossings II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Gambier, Yves; van Doorslaer, Luc Forthcoming. From Interdisciplinarity to Blurring Disciplinary Boundaries: The Background Chapter. In: Gambier, Yves; Van Doorslaer, Luc (eds.), Border Crossings II. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Kasparek, Christopher 1983. The Translator’s Endless Toil. The Polish Review 28(3): 83–87. 

Mertens, Irmak; van Doorslaer, Luc 2024. Museum Translation: A Combined Translation Studies and Semiotics Perspective. In: Verebová, Eva; Žitňanská, Lenka; Birčák, Andrej; Zahorák, Andrej (eds.), Tradition and Innovation in Translation StudiesResearch XII: Bridging Cultures and Communities through Translation Studies. Nitra: Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, 9–32. 

Ning, Wang 2024. The Cultural Turn in Translation Studies. London, New York: Routledge. 

Norris, Richard A. Jr. 2003. Augustine and the Close of the Ancient Period. In: Hauser, Alan J.; Watson, Duane F. (eds.), A History of Biblical Interpretation: The Ancient Period. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 380–408. 

Petrilli, Susan 2015. Translation of semiotics into translation theory, and vice versa. Punctum 1(2): 96–117. 

Petrilli, Susan 2016. Translation Everywhere. Signata 7: 23–56. 

Saint Jerome 2012 [397 AD]. Letter to Pammachius. Trans. Davis, Kathleen. In: Venuti, Lawrence (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 21–30. 

Takács, Laszlo 2019. Szent Jeromos és Szent Ágoston vitája a fordításról. Antikvitás & Reneszánsz 1(3): 51–62. 

Van Doorslaer, Luc; McMartin, Jack 2022. Where translation studies and the social meet: Setting the scene for ‘Translation in Society’. Translation in Society 1(1): 1–14. 

Vidal Claramonte, Mª Carmen África 2022. Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters. New York: Routledge. 

Watson, Nicholas 2008. Theories of translation. In: Ellis, Roger (ed.), Oxford History of Literary Translation, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Yan, Chen; Huang, Jingjing 2014. The Culture Turn in Translation Studies. Open Journal of Modern Linguistics 4: 487–494.