Interpretation and Iconicity in the Translation Process

Translation is a structural part of modelling devices, the very condition even for creativity, innovation, simulation, ultimately for what with Peirce we may indicate as the “play of musement” in the human world. Iconicity, as amply demonstrated by Peirce, carries out a decisive role in all such processes. Canonical translation is based on the code, convention, authority, authoriality, respect. Contrary to such an orientation, the task of the translator is not to give the impression that the translation is not a translation, but rather to convey the uniqueness, the specificity of the interpretant, its unrepeatability, the sense of its untranslatability, that is, its signifying materiality, absolute otherness. Translation is construed in the specificity of the signifier and in this sense is “by the letter”. As such the translation procedure is dominated by iconicity whose signifying value is an “effect” of language provoked by the “original”, by virtue of what Peirce calls its quality.