The Jakobson controversy: toward an understanding of the glottocentric drift in translation studies

ABSTRACT

Kobus Marais identified Roman Jakobson as a key figure behind the glottocentric drift in translation studies. A re-reading of Jakobson’s “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” is useful in understanding this drift. But it also sheds light on Marais’s own reserve about chances to counter glottocentrism. Jakobson placed interlingual translation at the centre, but he also took steps to displace it. Consequently, Jakobson’s argument may be read as open, tangential, and processual, admitting paradoxes despite the prevailing exigencies of non-contradiction. A little known eighteenth-century Polish statement on language and translation may be used to argue that translation scholarship today should explore its bio-semiotic structures. The (bio)semiotic theory of translation may need to present itself as a bio-semiotic commitment to translation studies in order to counter the analytic, metaphor-averse pull of scholarship from reverting bio-semiotic thought toward glottocentrism promoted by academic publishing and disciplinary rivalries.

KEYWORDS:

• (Bio)semiotic theory of translation
• Kobus Marais
• Roman Jakobson
• paradox
• glottocentrism

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Maciej Litwin

Maciej Litwin is an assistant professor in the Department of Translation, Institute of English Studies, University of Wrocław, Poland. He has worked with undergraduate and graduate students of translation, as well as post-graduate students of English in international relations and business. Over the last few years his research has focused on the economy of translation theory.