[Book Review] Sobre a (Bio)semiotic theory of translation

Abstract

The (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation, by Kobus Marais, 2019, is the most important book published on the relationship between Translation Studies and CSPeirce's pragmatist Semiotics, since Dinda Gorlée's Semio-translation, 2004. It can be said that Gorlée's work represented an initial stage of adjustments in the Translation Studies agenda, inspired by Peirce's philosophy. It is a preliminary work, whose greatest merit was to establish a more systemic link between the “areas”. Kobus Marais' book is the most important attempt to develop this project. It explores various consequences of the application of many entities and theoretical terms in Peirce's philosophy, especially in its mature phase (post-1903). In doing so, Marais opens up an unprecedented front of investigation whose importance should not be underestimated. He combines many apparatuses, which include (i) rudiments of a pragmatist-inspired process philosophy, with a strong pluralist bent; (ii) sign classifications developed by Peirce after 1903, a period that established itself as a “mature theory of the sign”, unexplored in translation studies, and still little explored by the Peircean scholarship itself; (iii) and an emergentist version associated with a treatment based on complex systems theory. On this last topic, especially influenced by Terrence Deacon and Floyd Merrell, Marais draws many implications, related to a definition of translation as negentropy, in complex systems, and generalizes the phenomenon to cases of emergence of socio-cultural phenomena.

I have divided this review into assertions. They refer to the theses that I consider the most important in Kobus Marais' book. Although so many others can be formulated, I consider those that may have the greatest implications.