Translation
A biosemiotic/more-than-human perspective
Published online: 11 February 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.18099.sea
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.18099.sea
Abstract
This article contributes to the developing recognition that the challenges raised by the enterprise of translating between languages extend beyond human language. It suggests that there are parallels between the political issues recognised by translation scholars – of exclusion, misrepresentation and speaking for ‘the other’ – and those raised by biosemiotics, the study of signs in all living systems. Following a discussion of convergence in current developments in translation studies, semiotics and human-animal studies, the article presents an analysis of empirical data, with specific reference to the different meanings of the verb hear. The findings demonstrate the anthropocentric assumptions that are embedded in the way hearing is routinely represented, and an argument is presented for the recognition of these in communications about the semiotic resources relevant to non-human life forms. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications of these issues for the enterprise of translation.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Challenges of translation
- 3.The ‘animal turn’
- 4.Semiosis and signs
- 5.A meta-semiotic lexeme: hear
- 5.1Linguistic commentary on hear
- 5.2The meaning of hear beyond the human
- 6.Animals hearing and heard
- 7.Discussion and implications
- 8.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
References
References (100)
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. (1993) 2000. “Thick Translation.” In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 417–429. London: Routledge.
Au, Whitlow W. L. 2004. “A Comparison of the Sonar Capabilities of Bats and Dolphins.” In Echolocation in Bats and Dolphins, edited by Jeanette A. Thomas, Cynthia F. Moss, and Marianne Vater, xiii–xxvii. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bekoff, Marc, and Jessica Pierce. 2010. Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Bourke, Joanna. 2011. What It Means to Be Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Press.
Brier, Søren. 2008. “The Paradigm of Peircean Biosemiotics.” Signs – International Journal of Semiotics 21: 30–81.
Cannizzaro, Sara, and Paul Cobley. 2015. “Biosemiotics, Politics and Th. A. Sebeok’s Move from Linguistics to Semiotics.” In Biosemiotic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics, edited by Ekaterina Velmezova, Kalevi Kull, and Stephen J. Cowley, 207–222. Heidelberg: Springer.
Carbone, Larry. 2004. What Animals Want: Expertise and Advocacy in Laboratory Animal Welfare Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Catchpole, Clive K., and Peter J. B. Slater. 2003. Bird Song: Biological Themes and Variations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cronin, Michael. 2017. Eco-translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene. London: Routledge.
Dawkins, Richard. 1984. “Animal Signals: Mind-Reading and Manipulation.” In Behavioural Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach, edited by John R. Krebs and Nicholas B. Davies, 380–402. Oxford: Blackwell.
de Waal, Frans. 2012. “Addendum to Down with Dualism! Two Millennia of Debate about Human Goodness (2010).” In Species Matters: Humane Advocacy and Cultural Theory, edited by Marianne DeKoven and Michael Lundblad, 190–194. New York: Columbia University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2003. “And Say the Animal Responded.” In Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, edited by Cary Wolfe, 121–145. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Dervin, Fred. 2013. “Politics of Identification in the Use of Lingua Francas in Student Mobility to Finland and France.” In Social and Cultural Aspects of Language Learning in Study Abroad, edited by Celeste Kinginger, 101–125. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Enfield, Nick J. 2000. “On Linguocentrism.” In Explorations in Linguistic Relativity, edited by Martin Pütz and Marjolyn Verspoor, 125–158. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Fairclough, Norman. 2001. “Critical Discourse Analysis as a Method in Social Scientific Research.” In Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, edited by Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, 121–138. London: Sage.
Favareau, Donald. 2010. “Preface.” In Essential Readings in Biosemiotics: Anthology and Commentary, edited by Donald Favareau, i–xii. Dordrecht: Springer.
Fay, Richard R., and Arthur N. Popper. 2000. “Evolution of Hearing in Vertebrates: The Inner Ears and Processing.” Hearing Research 149 (1): 1–10.
, eds. 2012. Comparative Hearing: Mammals. Springer Handbook of Auditory Research 4. New York: Springer.
Font, Enrique, and Pau Carazo. 2010. “Animals in Translation: Why There Is Meaning (But Probably No Message) in Animal Communication.” Animal Behaviour 80 (2): e1–e6.
Gerhardt, H. Carl, and Franz Huber. 2002. Acoustic Communication in Insects and Anurans: Common Problems and Diverse Solutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Gibson, Jeremy S., and James F. C. Windmill. 2017. “Engineering Novel Hearing Systems Inspired by Nature.” The 10th Anniversary Meeting of the British Animal Studies Network: ‘Hearing’ (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 19–20 May 2017).
Gorlée, Dinda L. 1994. Semiotics and the Problem of Translation: with Special Reference to the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Grandin, Temple, and Catherine Johnson. 2009. Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior. New York: SUNY Press.
Hanks, Patrick. 2004. “Corpus Pattern Analysis.” In Euralex Conference Proceedings, edited by Geoffrey Williams, 87–98. Lorient: Université de Bretagne-Sud, Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines.
Heffner, Henry E., and Rickye S. Heffner. 2007. “Hearing Ranges of Laboratory Animals.” Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science 46 (1): 20–22.
Hird, Myra J. 2009. The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution after Science Studies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper. 2010. “A Biosemiotic Approach to the Question of Meaning.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 45 (2): 367–390.
Hoy, Ronald R. 2012. “Acute as a Bug’s Ear: An Informal Discussion of Hearing in Insects.” In Comparative Hearing: Insects, edited by Ronald R. Hoy and Richard R. Fay, 1–17. New York: Springer.
Jakobson, Roman. (1959) 2000. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 113–118. London: Routledge.
Kershenbaum, Arik, Daniel T. Blumstein, Marie A. Roch, Çağlar Akçay, Gregory Backus, Mark A. Bee, Kirsten Bohn, Yan Cao, Gerald Carter, and Cristiane Cäsar. 2014. “Acoustic Sequences in Non-human Animals: A Tutorial Review and Prospectus.” Biological Reviews 91 (1): 13–52.
Ketten, Darlene R. 1992. “The Marine Mammal Ear: Specializations for Aquatic Audition and Echolocation.” In The Evolutionary Biology of Hearing, edited by Douglas B. Webster, Arthur N. Popper, and Richard R. Fay, 717–750. New York: Springer.
2000. “Cetacean Ears.” In Hearing by Whales and Dolphins, edited by Whitlow W. L. Au, Richard R. Fay, and Arthur N. Popper, 43–108. New York: Springer.
Kohn, Eduardo. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Kull, Kalevi. 1998. “Semiotic Ecology: Different Natures in the Semiosphere.” Sign Systems Studies (1): 344–371.
Kull, Kalevi, Claus Emmeche, and Jesper Hoffmeyer. 2011. “Why Biosemiotics? An Introduction to Our View on the Biology of Life Itself.” In Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs, edited by Claus Emmeche and Kalevi Kull, 1–22. London: Imperial College Press.
Kull, Kalevi, and Peeter Torop. 2011. “Biotranslation: Translation between Umwelten.” In Readings in Zoosemiotics, edited by Timo Maran, Dario Martinelli, and Aleksei Turovski, 411–425. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Lacassain-Lagoin, Christelle. 2011. “Le verbe hear et ses différentes constructions: intégration et résonance du discours de l’autre.” In Formes allogènes dans le discours: imbrication et résonance (Rives – Cahiers de l’Arc Atlantique 6), edited by Fabienne Gaspari and Catherine Mari, 59–82. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Leech, Geoffrey, Paul Rayson, and Andrew Wilson. 2001. Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English, Based on the British National Corpus. London: Longman.
López, Ana María Rojo, and Javier Valenzuela. 2004. “Verbs of Sensory Perception: An English-Spanish Comparison.” Languages in Contrast 5 (2): 219–243.
Lundblad, Michael. 2012. “Archaeology of a Humane Society: Animality, Savagery, Blackness.” In Species Matters: Humane Advocacy and Cultural Theory, edited by Marianne DeKoven and Michael Lundblad, 75–102. New York: Columbia University Press.
Manoussaki, Daphne, Richard S. Chadwick, Darlene R. Ketten, Julie Arruda, Emilios K. Dimitriadis, and Jen T. O’Malley. 2008. “The Influence of Cochlear Shape on Low-Frequency Hearing.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (16): 6162–6166.
Marais, Kobus, and Kalevi Kull. 2016. “Biosemiotics and Translation Studies.” In Border Crossings. Translation Studies and Other Disciplines, edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, 169–188. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Maran, Timo. 2007. “Towards an Integrated Methodology of Ecosemiotics: The Concept of Nature-Text.” Sign Systems Studies 35 (1/2): 269–294.
Maran, Timo, and Kalevi Kull. 2014. “Ecosemiotics: Main Principles and Current Developments.” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 96 (1): 41–50.
Merrell, Floyd. 2001. “Charles Sanders Peirce’s Concept of the Sign.” In The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics, edited by Paul Cobley, 28–39. London: Routledge.
. 2003. Sensing Corporeally: Toward a Posthuman Understanding. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Mooney, Richard. 2014. “Translating Birdsong Research.” Birdsong: Rhythm and Clues from Neurons to Behavior (Georgetown University, Washington DC, 14–15 November 2014).
Narins, Peter M., Angela S. Stoeger, and Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell. 2016. “Infrasonic and Seismic Communication in the Vertebrates with Special Emphasis on the Afrotheria: An Update and Future Directions.” In Vertebrate Sound Production and Acoustic Communication, edited by Roderick A. Suthers, W. Tecumseh Fitch, Richard R. Fay, and Arthur N. Popper, 191–227. Cham: Springer.
O’Connell-Rodwell, Caitlin E. 2007. “Keeping an ‘Ear’ to the Ground: Seismic Communication in Elephants.” Physiology 22 (4): 287–294.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. c. 1897. “(CP).” In Collected Papers of C. S. Peirce 1931–1958, edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pepperberg, Irene M. 2007. “Grey Parrots Do Not Always ‘Parrot’: The Roles of Imitation and Phonological Awareness in the Creation of New Labels from Existing Vocalizations.” Language Sciences 29 (1): 1–13.
2010. “Vocal Learning in Grey Parrots: A Brief Review of Perception, Production, and Cross-species Comparisons.” Brain and Language 115 (1): 81–91.
Popper, Arthur N., Richard R. Fay, Christopher Platt, and Olav Sand. 2003. “Sound Detection Mechanisms and Capabilities of Teleost Fishes.” In Sensory Processing in Aquatic Environments, edited by Shaun P. Collin and N. Justin Marshall, 3–38. New York: Springer.
Queiroz, João, and Daniella Aguiar. 2015. “C.S. Peirce and Intersemiotic Translation.” In International Handbook of Semiotics, edited by P. P. Trifonas, 201–215. Berlin: Springer.
Ragge, D. R., and W. J. Reynolds. 1988. “The Songs and Taxonomy of the Grasshoppers of the Chorthippus Biguttulus Group in the Iberian Peninsula (Orthoptera: Acrididae).” Journal of Natural History 22 (4): 897–929.
Rendall, Drew, Michael J. Owren, and Michael J. Ryan. 2009. “What Do Animal Signals Mean?” Animal Behaviour 78 (2): 233–240.
Roy, Arundhati. 2004. “Peace and the New Corporate Liberation Theology.” The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize Lecture. [URL]
Savage-Rumbaugh, E. Sue. 1986. Ape Language: From Conditioned Response to Symbol. New York: Columbia University Press.
Scott-Phillips, Thomas C. 2010. “Animal Communication: Insights from Linguistic Pragmatics.” Animal Behaviour 79 (1): e1–e4.
Sealey, Alison, and Nickie Charles. 2013. “‘What Do Animals Mean to You?’: Naming and Relating to Nonhuman Animals.” Anthrozoös 26 (4): 485–503.
Sealey, Alison, and Lee Oakley. 2013. “Anthropomorphic Grammar? Some Linguistic Patterns in the Wildlife Documentary Series Life
.” Text & Talk 33 (3): 399–420.
Sealey, Alison, and Chris Pak. 2018. “First Catch Your Corpus: Methodological Challenges in Constructing a Thematic Corpus.” Corpora 13 (2): 229–254.
Segerdahl, Par, William Fields, and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. 2005. Kanzi’s Primal Language. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Simmonds, Mark P., Sarah J. Dolman, Michael Jasny, E. C. M. Parsons, Lindy Weilgart, Andrew J. Wright, and Russell Leaper. 2014. “Marine Noise Pollution – Increasing Recognition But Need for More Practical Action.” Journal of Ocean Technology 9 (1): 71–90.
Stecconi, Ubaldo. 2007. “Five Reasons Why Semiotics is Good for Translation Studies.” In Doubts and Directions in Translation Studies, edited by Yves Gambier, Miriam Shlesinger, and Radegundis Stolze, 15–26. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stibbe, Arran. 2012. Animals Erased: Discourse, Ecology, and Reconnection with the Natural World. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Taylor, Anna Magdalena, Victoria Frances Ratcliffe, Karen McComb, and David Reby. 2014. “Auditory Communication in Domestic Dogs: Vocal Signalling in the Extended Social Environment of a Companion Animal.” In The Social Dog, edited by Juliane Kaminski and Sarah Marshall-Pescini, 131–163. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Temple, Bogusia, and Alys Young. 2004. “Qualitative Research and Translation Dilemmas.” Qualitative Research 4 (2): 161–178.
Tharakeshwar, V. B. 2009. “Translating Tragedy into Kannada.” In Decentering Translation Studies: India and Beyond, edited by Judy Wakabayashi and Rita Kothari, 57–74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Thomas, Keith. 1991. Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800. London: Penguin.
Tomlinson, Gary. 2015. A Million Years of Music: The Emergence of Human Modernity. New York: Zone Books.
Tudge, Colin. 2013. Why Genes Are Not Selfish and People Are Nice: A Challenge to the Dangerous Ideas That Dominate Our Lives. Edinburgh: Floris Books.
Tymoczko, Maria. 2000. “Translation and Political Engagement: Activism, Social Change and the Role of Translation in Geopolitical Shifts.” The Translator 6 (1): 23–47.
. 2014. “Western Metaphorical Discourses Implicit in Translation Studies.” In Thinking Through Translation with Metaphors, 115–166. London: Routledge.
Venuti, Lawrence. 2000. “Translation, Community, Utopia.” In The Translation Studies Reader, edited by Lawrence Venuti, 468–488. London: Routledge.
Waters, Dean A. 2003. “Bats and Moths: What Is There Left to Learn?” Physiological Entomology 28 (4): 237–250.
Webster, John. 2017. “Hearing and Listening, Survival and Satisfaction in Sentient Animals.” The 10th Anniversary Meeting of the British Animal Studies Network: ‘Hearing’ (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, 19–20 May 2017).
Weil, Kari. 2006. “Killing Them Softly: Animal Death, Linguistic Disability, and the Struggle for Ethics.” Configurations 14 (1): 87–96.
Whitehouse, Marianne, and Carolyn Colvin. 2001. “‘Reading’ Families: Deficit Discourse and Family Literacy.” Theory into Practice 40 (3): 212–219.
Whitt, Richard J. 2009. “Auditory Evidentiality in English and German: The Case of Perception Verbs.” Lingua 119 (7): 1083–1095.
Cited by (4)
Cited by four other publications
Forte, Magali & Kelleen Toohey
Haapaniemi, Riku
ÇIRPAN, Hüseyin, Dilruba İZGÜDEN & Ramazan ERDEM
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
