Affordance as Boundary in Intersemiotic Translation: Some Insights from Working with Sign Languages in Poetic Form

Abstract

Pollitt offers a perspective emerging from the encounter between sign languages and alphabetized languages. The examples illustrating this chapter are drawn from the challenge of translating sign language poetry, or ‘Signart’. The densely semiotic, three-dimensional nature of Signart increases the demand on translators to expand their intersemiotic range in order to achieve successful translation. Given here as case studies, Pollitt’s experimental intersemiotic practices harness the semiotic resources of various communication modes and materials. Situated in relation to a number of contemporary translation theories, this chapter explores the new meanings that are made available by these alternative translational practices. Pollitt suggests intersemiotic translations of Signart can engage new audiences in different ways, thereby developing new social and cultural forms of communication beyond traditional translations of Signart.