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In:Transmedia in Translation and Transculturation
Edited by Vasso Giannakopoulou and Elin Sütiste
[Benjamins Translation Library 167] 2025
► pp. 2–30

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The spread of narratives across medial, linguistic, and cultural boundaries in the age of media convergence

 | University of Cyprus
Published online: 20 November 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.167.01gia
Abstract
In an era defined by globalization and digital media convergence, our understanding of textuality has expanded and the way that texts are produced, distributed, and consumed has changed considerably, especially when they cross linguistic and cultural boundaries. Grounded in semiotic and media theory, the article examines how media-related concepts can be particularly useful to the study of relevant research topics in translation studies (TS). Drawing on foundational theories by Henry Jenkins, and Juri Lotman, an attempt is made to delineate key terms — multimedia, crossmedia, intermedia, and transmedia — by tracing shared ground and to suggest their potential relevance for TS. Transmediality is conceptualized as the expansion of narrative fragments, across multiple media, with the engagement of multiple produsers (Bruns 2008), at an age when traditional concepts, such as the linearity of the reading experience and the fixedness of textual meaning, have been seriously destabilized. Ultimately, the article argues for the usefulness of transmediality as both a conceptual tool and an analytical framework, capable of capturing the dialogic and dynamic nature of narrative dissemination. By embedding this concept within the semiotics of culture, this essay offers a model to understand how stories travel, transform, and persist across time, space, and modality and suggests that, should we indeed agree on its definition, transmediality could potentially be a useful tool for navigating the complexity of textual circulation across today’s multimodal, multilingual, and multicultural landscapes.
Article outline
  • Introduction: Changes in communication processes in the age of media convergence
  • Transmediality, intermediality, crossmediality, multimediality: An attempt to untangle nomenclature
    • i.Multimediality and multimodality
    • ii.Transmediality
    • iii.Intermediality
    • iv.Crossmediality
    • v.Transmediality, intermediality, crossmediality, multimediality: An attempt to untangle nomenclature
  • Culture is the linchpin
  • Juri Lotman and the semiotics of culture
  • Transmediality and translation
  • A few closing remarks
  • Notes
  • Works cited
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