This book is based on the Goggio Public Lectures I gave at the University of Toronto in 1998. This printed version also contains many examples I was unable to give during the lectures owing to lack of time. I have also organized the material differently so that the first part deals more with personal experiences in translation while the second part is more theoretical in nature. With respect to the Goggio Lectures, this second part has been enhanced by many considerations suggested to me in the course of the Seminars on Intersemiotic Translation held at the University of Bologna over...

It seems to me that studying translation is like studying bilingualism. Any study on bilingualism is primarily performed by observing the behaviour of a child exposed to two languages, and only continuous daily observation yields sufficient data on the development of a double linguistic competence. Now, some linguists have said that such observation is possible only if (i) one is a linguist, (ii) working with bilingual children, and (iii) prepared to follow their linguistic behaviour on a day-to-day basis from the earliest stages. This means that a reliable study on bilingualism could be made only by a parent who is...

In his essay on the linguistic aspects of translation, Jakobson (1959) suggested that there are three types of translation:intralinguistic,interlinguistic, andintersemiotic. Interlinguistic translation occurs when a text is translated from one language to another; in other words, when we have ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of some other language’ (which is translation proper). Intersemiotic translation (and in this lay the most innovative feature of his proposal) occurs when we have ‘an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of non-verbal sign systems,’ and therefore when a novel is ‘translated’ into a film, for example,...