Performing multimodality: literary translation, intersemioticity and technology

Abstract

Based on literary projects ranging from cyber-literature to art installations combining design and poetry, this paper conceptualizes translation as a kind of biliterate performance that forms part of a more holistic literary communication. The paper identifies three cases that illustrate different modes of engagement among the written word, translation-as-performance, technology and our sense modalities. It proposes a multimodal perspective on translation and a translational perspective on multimodal expression in this digital age. Thus understood, translation is no longer rooted to the word, which is usually (though by no means always) the origin from where a source text emanates but not necessarily where the target text locates itself. Translation does not just ‘carry across’ meaning in its etymological sense, but partakes in the making of meaning in literary production, either centrally or peripherally. A technologically-mediated sense of translation that traverses the boundaries of not just two languages but also two or more media opens up the potentialities of different ways of communicating literary meaning. Thinking about translation in this way is profitable for negotiating meaning, in both its abstract construction and material form, in an age of communication where our sensory perceptions are more engaged in discursive practices than ever before.