Translation in the Albanian communist and post-communist context from a semiotic perspective

ABSTRACT

In the semiotic perspective of Lotman, a semiosphere goes through a series of explosive and gradual changes. Explosive moments generate innovation in unpredictable ways while gradual progress ensures novelty via succession. The fact that the Albanian semiosphere developed from stagnation to explosion is demonstrated through emblematic translation cases. With regard to these milestones, the study analyses the relationship between the writer Ismail Kadare and his translator Jusuf Vrioni during the time when the control exercised by the regime had reached its harshest point. Then, the focus is placed on the feminist author-translator Diana Çuli and on the impact that her activism and her translations had during the post-communist time. Together with other young translators, Çuli has brought some of the greatest and provocative writers into the Albanian culture and has employed their motifs and themes to raise awareness on gender issues in order to improve women’s life.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation as development
• semiotics
• communism and postcommunism
• albania

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rovena Troqe

Rovena Troqe is a lecturer at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and a research assistant at the University of the Free State (South Africa). Her current research focuses on translated news and on intersemiotic translation from a generative semiotic perspective. Her work has appeared in Semiotica and she is the author of Traduttologia e semiotica generativa. Per un nuovo approccio interdisciplinare (Peter Lang, 2014)

Alketa Pema

Alketa Pema is a lecturer of Translation theory and Translation Practice at the University of Tirana, Albania and holds a PhD in Literary Translation from Tirana University. Her interdisciplinary  research interests are in Literary Theory, Comparative literature and Poetry Translation. Her PhD disseration “ Translating Whitman in the albanian language” focuses on a theoretical and contextual analysis of the translation of W. Whitman’s  Poetry into Albanian. The study takes consideration of reading and interpretative difficulties in terms of content and style.