Overcoming the Semiotic Boundary through Translation Strategies

Volkova Anna Aleksandrovna Lecturer, Department of Modern Problems of Philosophy, Russian State University for the Humanities 125047, Russia, Moskva, g. Moscow, ul. Miusskaya Ploshchad', 6 mymailmymail1994@mail.ru

Karelin Vladislav Mikhailovich ORCID: 0000-0003-0239-4034 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor, Department of Modern Problems of Philosophy, Russian State University for the Humanities 125047, Russia, Gorrod Moskva, g. Moscow, ul. Miusskaya Ploshchad', 6 vlad.karelin@gmail.com

Introduction

Each communicative act as its basis contains a translation process, which appears to be a special mechanism for achieving mutual understanding. The desynchronization of semiotic systems involved in communication sets certain conditions for the communicative act itself. At the same time, the functionality of the semiotic system is not limited only to the process of generating signs, but also presupposes some plasticity and mobility that manifests itself when it collides with another system. A similar rejection of rigid structuration as the solidification and centralization of the system, investigated by J. Derrida ^[6], relies on a poststructuralist approach. The existing semantic gap between semiotic systems, which is an untranslatable remainder, forms the boundary between the participants of the communicative process. Such a boundary consists of a set of semantic shades of signs that cannot be completely recoded in another semiotic system. In other words, the semiotic boundary is a set of differences between one semiotic system and another that collide in a communicative act ^{[12, p. 183]}.  In the process of translation, this boundary is actualized, i.e. the inconsistencies of meanings in each of the semiotic systems involved in communication become more acute. The polysemy characteristic of each semiotic system also complicates the translation process, and manifests itself already at the first stage of interpretation, preceding the selection of the equivalent of the sign. In this regard, each case of translation involves taking into account not only the syntactic and grammatical features of the structure of the transmitted message or text, but also the pragmatic conditions of its transmission, as well as cultural-historical, social, etc. contexts of its creation. In this case, translation practice is accompanied by a comprehensive approach to the analysis of the source text.

Translation as manipulation of meaning

The inconsistency of semiotic systems prevents the possibility of establishing a universal set of sequential actions for the implementation of the translation process. Despite the fact that in the history of human thought one can find many attempts to comprehend the practice of translation, nevertheless, they all rest on the already well-known dilemma, already outlined by St. Hieronymus: to translate "word by word" or "thought by thought" ^{[14, p. 174]}. This insoluble contradiction still haunts translators today, although attempts are constantly being made to overcome it. One of the possible attempts to resolve this dilemma can be a pragmatic approach to translation, which implies the need to change the translation tactics in each individual case: whether to follow the letter of the author or adapt the text to the reader. Thus, in the communicative process, the meaning of the original message maneuvers between its source and addressee each time by changing translation tactics. Based on this, the translation process can be understood as manipulating the meaning of the message in the interests of the addressee or sender. Such manipulations can construct the relationship of the participants of a communicative act in different ways, in different cases forcing the sender of the message to adapt to the recipient, or vice versa, taking the recipient of the message into the semiotic field of his counterpart.

Manipulations carried out through translation, among other things, can be explained by the contingent nature of communication ^[7]. Defining communication as the main mechanism of constructing social relations, N. Luhmann gives each communicative act the property of double contingency ^{[13, p. 327]}. According to his theory, the double contingency of a communicative act is explained by the fact that each of the two participants in communication carries some uncertainty for the other, manifested mainly in the inability to unambiguously determine the meaning of the transmitted message. This is how the understood communicative interaction becomes possible and is realized precisely because of the inevitable mutual semantic uncertainty of both communicants. A.Y. Antonovsky illustrates the fundamental role of double contingency using a biological analogy: random mutations of genes (one uncertainty) and adaptation to an unpredictable environment (another uncertainty) they do not threaten the body at all, but set quite specific adaptive features of its development ^{[2, pp. 22-23]}. For the Luhmann concept, such double uncertainty is universal, and its presence is significant for both natural and cultural and social interactions. In the latter case, bilateral uncertainty turns out to be not a negative, but, on the contrary, a constructive factor in the social use of language.

The randomness of the interpretative choice, which remains unpredictable for each of its participants, is caused by the closeness of their referential systems. In this regard, already at the level of choosing words to express thoughts, there is the possibility of manipulation. J. Steiner notes that this ability to mislead "is based on the dual structure of language communication: outward-directed speech conceals a parallel flow of fully articulated consciousness" ^{[17, p. 178]}. Thus, such a desynchronization of thought and word forms the unspoken, which also complicates the correct interpretation of what was said, and then the process of selecting the equivalent of the sign. Thus, manipulation is already initially embedded in every communicative act and manifests itself already at the level of interpretation in attempts to impose on the interlocutor a certain way of translating the sent message. B. Latour, exploring science and ways of its interaction with other spheres of society within the framework of the methodology of actor-network theory, cites several translation methods considered as manipulative strategies.

Analyzing the models of scientific research development, Latour identifies several main translation strategies, some of which are divided into separate tactical techniques. He designates translation as "interpretations that "factor builders" give to their own interests and the interests of the people they involve" ^{[9, p. 178]}. Such an interpretation involves the use of translation as a kind of reorientation of the trajectory of another actor with whom interests intersect, or one's own trajectory for the successful achievement of goals. Thus, in addition to linguistic meaning, Latour gives the concept of translation a geometric meaning, which gives it the ability to "move from one place to another" ^{[9, p. 192]}. The first strategy is to convince the other actor that the interests of both participants in communication coincide. The second strategy is more complicated, because in addition to the belief in the unity of interests, it is also necessary to impose a certain way to achieve these joint goals. The next strategy is to convince the other actor that the proposed way to achieve the goal is more convenient and profitable than his. The fourth strategy is presented for Latour in the form of a whole complex of tactics, the main task of which is to mix the interests and goals of actors of social interaction. The tactics characteristic of this strategy are aimed at manipulating goals and ways to achieve them. The latter strategy seems to be the most radical and at the same time the simplest: you need to convince another actor of your need, including in order to achieve his interests. In a sense, this strategy includes all the previous ones, and it is here that the geometric representation of translation, which Latour introduces, becomes most obvious, without abandoning its linguistic interpretation. Thus, the geometric understanding of translation can be considered as a change in the path to achieving the goal, which will satisfy several actors at once. The linguistic side of translation is a reformulation of interests using their form, which again will be relevant for all actors of social interaction ^{[9, p. 196]}.

Translation in the laboratory: analysis of Pasteur's work

All the above-described strategies for translating interests proposed by Latour represent opportunities to expand the communicative field, including interaction not only through language (although it certainly plays a dominant role), but also through other means. Showing the work of translation in various forms of interaction, Latour expands the field of semiosis, which means the spread and functioning of signs outside the language. This expansion is also due to the inclusion of non-human actors in communication: things, living beings. Using the example of research on the work of scientific laboratories, Latour shows various ways of building relationships between actors, including those that, according to him, have an "inhuman" nature. By actors of non-human nature, they mean animals, plants, ancestral spirits and other objects with which a person interacts in various spheres of his life in one way or another, while endowing them with a kind of social and communicative functions.

The most famous example of such an analysis is the study of Pasteur's work on the invention of the anthrax vaccine. The anthropological view of Pasteur's work, which Latour undertakes, reveals the implicit stages necessary for successful research and further implementation of its results into everyday practices. Pasteur was able to carry out several stages of translating interests, each of which can also be represented as a sequence of separate translation tactics. First, he moved the laboratory to a farm in Pouilly-les-Forts in order to collect material for research. Next, Pasteur reproduced the real conditions in the laboratory in order to identify the cause of anthrax, and found the causative agents of this disease. The next stage was the reverse transfer: he again creates laboratory conditions on the farm in order to implement an experiment with the invented vaccine ^{[11, p. 139]}. At the same time, all stages of the transfer are accompanied by Pasteur's interaction with several types of non-human beings. In addition to pets that were infected with anthrax, Pasteur had to work with bacteria that cause this disease. Interaction with these creatures, which was a study of their vital activity in the laboratory, means the translation of the "interests" of bacteria: maintenance of vital activity and reproduction. The mechanism of such translation is the transcoding of the characters obtained as a result of the study of bacteria, and the further use of the information obtained to create a vaccine. Thus, the analysis of the work in the Pasteur laboratory serves for Latour as an extremely illustrative example of the possibility of translating outside the language.

Network form of interaction as a condition of equality of actors and actors

Pasteur's work in the laboratory, consisting of different translation strategies, is eventually presented as one of the ways of speaking for another. The researcher, in this case Pasteur, assigns himself the authority to speak on behalf of microbes, acting as a translator of their interests. Microbes thus become actants, which Latour defines as "those whom someone represents, be they people or things" ^{[9, p. 143]}. The actor representing the actors speaks on their behalf, while the actors themselves cannot speak ^{[9, p. 126]}. On the one hand, the translation of the interests of actors contributes to their representation, in some way discovery, display and further embedding in the network of social relations. However, on the other hand, such representation, which deprives actors of their own voice, provokes difficulties in the communication of actors in society and their further interaction with other members of society, because it assumes some isolation due to mediating in the expression of their interests. Nevertheless, such manipulativeness at the same time coexists with the potential equality of both actors and actants. This equality is to some extent justified by the latent Hegelian dialectic of slave and master, which is a necessary change of subjects with power. The possession of power in this case is represented as the ability to establish interpretations of the kind that will be beneficial to the actor speaking from the position of "master". However, another actor can always be found who can turn the existing system of subordination in his favor by transferring interests through one of the manipulative strategies.

Moreover, the actor can get out of such control of the actor, in case of divergence of their interests and in the process of constructing a new network of relations, become an actor himself. In other words, actors and actants represent functional, situational roles, which makes it possible to equalize their statuses. Such a scheme follows the poststructuralist methodology in a certain way, referring to the rhizomatic view of the society of J. Deleuze and F. Guattari, representing his flexibility, fundamental variability, readiness for any external influences. Instead of a strict hierarchy of the social order, a rhizome appears, a map that can unfold in various directions ^{[5, p. 21-22]} and include new actors and actants. Such a dispersion of social ties may be due, among other things, to the preservation of a plurality of meanings and a double contingent of a communicative act, preserving equal opportunities for translation for all participants in social relations. By building a network form of interaction, actors and actants find themselves facing the necessary condition for changing positions in order to successfully realize their interests. Referring to the above strategies for translating interests, it becomes clear that in different situations it is necessary to adjust or adjust other actors and actants to their own point of view in order to ensure the achievement of goals. It turns out that the formation of networks, translation is accompanied by equality of actors and actors, who over time may take different positions in relation to each other: if in one situation an actor speaks for an actor, it does not mean that this hierarchy will remain when the goals and interests of the participants in these relationships change. Humans and non-human beings adapt to each other, each interpreting the interests of the other in their own way.

Tracing the mechanics of such relationships between actors and actors, it becomes obvious that translation in this case is understood as a special kind of operation that promotes the spread of social ties. As O.V. Kharkhordin notes in the preface to the translation of "There was no New Time" into Russian: "translation is the main way to build a network" ^{[18, p. 51]}. It is thanks to translation that it becomes possible to make scientific discoveries. Further, expanding the scope of translation, taking it beyond the limits of science, Latour transforms it into the main mechanism for building social connections – networks. Such a "sociology of translation" allows us to revise the process of relations itself and replace it with the process of "transfers". "The sociology of translation is the sociology of transferring power along a chain, it is the sociology of living together, understood as living in a place, as building a series of gears or lines of movement in a certain place, and not the exchange of impulses due to mutual correlation" ^{[18, p. 54]}. Thus, understanding translation as a transfer, i.e. in a geometric meaning, the function of translation in a communicative act becomes possible, which consists in overcoming the semiotic boundary. The problem of the potential surmountability/insurmountability of semiotic boundaries has also become a topic of discussion for many authors, who can be attributed to representatives of the philosophy of translation, who sometimes demonstrated polar positions. In particular, it is possible to compare the theory of translation proposed by P. Riker, proclaiming the potential impossibility of finding equivalent signs in different semiotic systems ^{[15; 16]}, with the translation tasks proposed by V. Benjamin, according to which the similarity of various sign systems is established only in translation ^[4]. The transfer of meaning from one semiotic system to another, which is observed during translation, not only actualizes the intersemiotic border, but also implies the possibility of crossing it. And this, in turn, makes it possible to remove the translation paradox noted by N.S. Avtonomova, demonstrating the ability of language to both unite and divide people ^{[1, p. 603]}. In the process of forming social ties that form networks of relationships, or relationships, a common semantic space is created. Various manipulative translation strategies presuppose the initial interpretation of the interests of another actor, which refers to the first stage of the linguistic translation process – the interpretation of the meanings of the original message. The hermeneutics of interests in translation that goes beyond the scope of language, or rather not limited to language alone, allows you to more accurately calculate the most profitable options for redirecting interests and extract the greatest benefit from this. Thus, the initial interpretation of the interests of the participants in the communicative act allows you to reorient, i.e. translate, the interests of another actor, or your own interests, to achieve a certain goal. Through the presence of such a frontier territory of meanings, it becomes possible to transition and connect various actors in a single field of interaction. This border space is a kind of mixing of languages, creating a kind of pidgin that serves as a mediator between the participants of the communicative act.

The network form of interaction as a condition for the possibility of overcoming the semiotic boundary in the act of translation

In the frontier space of the meeting of different actors and actors, their interaction with each other is constructed according to the model of language communication. In this case, there is a transfer of language structures into the field of social interaction, which reflects the structuralist basis of this approach. This makes it possible to use signs not only in communication between people, but also in interspecific types of communication. Such an extension of semiosis makes it possible to include non-human beings in the communicative field, since in this case they are also endowed with the ability to interpret and produce various signs. Thus, it can be assumed that Latour's approach originates in structuralism and is largely justified by semiotics. A similar statement is made by A.G. Kuznetsov, analyzing the Latour method from the point of view of A.J. Greimas' structural semiotics. Kuznetsov traces the influence of Greimas semiotics on the analysis of scientific texts and practices carried out by Latour ^{[8, p. 96]}, highlighting common semantic places in the use of individual terms and in the direction of research itself. However, the influence of semiotics on Latour is not limited only to the analysis of scientific texts and practices, because in the works devoted to the study of the dichotomy of nature and culture, the semitic approach is also implicitly present, allowing non-human beings to be inscribed in the general communicative field. Thus, it can be assumed that the semiotic and structuralist foundation evolves and expands its field of action together with Latour's concept, which also goes beyond the limits of the scientific laboratory. However, one can also trace the tendency to overcome structuralism in his approach. This is evidenced by the choice of his model of a network society, presented as flexible and mobile, and constructed through translation, instead of the dominance of a clear static structure. The criticism of the structuralist approach lies in the unreasonableness of the search for certain rules of interaction, which are always thought to be predetermined, while Latour's approach assumes the local construction of a network of interactions in which the same actor can become an actor to realize the goals of other participants in social interaction ^{[10, p. 189]}. Actually, this flexibility of social space allows us to consider non-human beings as full-fledged actors of social action, and not as a kind of complement to a person, perceived as tools for exalting his role.

Thus, the network form of interaction assumes the possibility of crossing the semiotic field, which has its own characteristics for each subject. Starting from the thesis of J. According to Steiner, each subject uses a special idiolect ^{[17, p. 220]}, communication is presented as a process, the internal mechanism of which is translation. Latour's network model of society allows us to consider the mechanism of communication as a universal way of exchanging interests for building joint interaction. To a certain extent, each communicative act contains translation as its internal mechanism, which acts as a kind of engine of social relations. By entering non-human beings into the communicative exchange, it becomes possible to trace: how the semiotic border is crossed. The value of such an intersection is especially clearly revealed in the conditions of asymmetry of sign systems used by humans and non-human beings. The very possibility of such overcoming of the semiotic boundary through translation seems to be quite an ambitious task, nevertheless, such projects are not new and have been considered by many researchers of language and translation. Translation from one semiotic system to another, from verbal to nonverbal, was also considered in the concept of R. Jacobson ^[19]. 

Conclusion

The process of crossing the border was interpreted not only within the limits of language, but also as an opportunity to overcome the border in social, cultural, moral, theological terms. The concept of transgression from the point of view of describing erotic and religious inner experience is developed by J. Bataille, who opposes the taboo nature of such a transition to the process of border violation. At the same time, transgression does not cancel the ban on crossing the border of what is permissible and forbidden, "it removes the ban without destroying it" ^{[3, p. 511]}. Such an understanding of transgression suggests that the border itself is not destroyed at the moment of overcoming, but is endowed with a kind of throughput. It involves a gradual transition and transformation of the object crossing it, whether it is a translated word or taboo forms of behavior. From this follows the statement that the border and its intersection initially assume each other. Such a connection of the border and the possibility of overcoming it is fixed in translation, which is designated as a process of transformation, changing the original message by adding or losing some semantic content. At the same time, the boundary between the semiotic spaces of the transfer of meanings is thought to be blurred, and not as a clearly drawn line. Such blurriness indicates the presence of a special boundary space connecting semiotic fields. This meeting can equally affect the further development of semiotic systems. So, for example, it is possible to note the mutual influence of different languages on each other in the process of their meeting during translation, which may manifest itself in different ways, but the most obvious consequence of such an interchange are borrowing words. The same process can be traced in the translation of interests, considered as the construction of social networks. Actors discover some common territory where cooperation seems to be mutually beneficial for all parties of the communicative act. To find such a common space, which at the same time acts as a boundary separating the interests of the actors, various translation strategies described by Latour can be applied. Further, by expanding the scope of the translation mechanism in communicative processes by adding new participants, namely non-human beings, it is also possible to trace the emergence of this common semiotic field. It will serve as a tool for mutual understanding between such seemingly incomparable participants in communication processes.

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