Liaisons fructueuses : théories des sémioticiens français comme source d’inspiration pour les chercheurs polonais en traduction intersémiotique

Abstract

FRUCTUOUS LIAISONS: THEORIES OF FRENCH SEMIOTICIANS AS A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION FOR POLISH RESEARCHERS IN INTERSEMIOTIC TRANSLATION

Today, reflection on film adaptation and intersemiotic translation oscillates between two extremes: “one-off” analyses of concrete works on the one hand, and global reflection on the multimodal nature of new media, on the other. From this perspective, intersemioticity is conceived as a quality “hidden” in every text, including those with no other codes than the verbal code; in such cases, adapting the text to other media “reveals” its intrinsic intersemiotic potential. But in following this new path, scholars have moved away from the original aim of the French Semiotics: to prove that Jakobson was right in declaring that intersemiotic translation is a process that can be compared to interlinguistic translation, that the former is subject to the same rules as the latter and, consequently, that transmutation can be analyzed using the methods and tools originally created for interlinguistic translation. There is, however, a group of Polish researchers who have carried out, and continue to carry out, in-depth research into the problem of “adaptation-as-translation”. In this article, I shall attempt to outline the impact that French theory (first filmological, then semiotic and semiological) has had on intersemiotic translation research (by authors publishing both in French and in Polish); my second aim is to familiarize French-speaking readers with the “Polish school’s” theories of adaptation-as-translation, especially those of Seweryna Wysłouch, and their potential to promote and deepen reflection on the language of film and intersemiotic translation.