Understanding semiotic codes in text interpretation

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Understanding semiotic codes in text interpretation

Kuzenko Н.M.

Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University, Mykolaiv

Today's semiotic scientific explorations are aimed at studying the semiotic approach to the text, concentrating on its semantic nature and trying to interpret the text as a phenomenon of the language that conveys socio-semantic information, that is, knowledge (emoffyffThe semiotic approach to the text conveys socio-semantic information which is created, received, stored and transmitted by humans to one another through a variety of messages (linguistic, musical, dance, visual, etc.). The content of socio-semantic information is divided into two main types: stored and current information.

The systems of codes used by the addresser and the addressee are different, that is why in the process of translation we receive not one exact copy of the original, but one of its possible interpretations. Thus, the source text and the target one are only relatively identical. The main task of the translator is not to lose the invariant essence of the primary source.

The success of interpretation is determined, first of all, by the processes of encoding and decoding the message, which means choosing the appropriate code. The code for the recipient of information is the key to decoding the message. Without knowing the key code, the perception of the message becomes impossible and causes the recipient to: a) abandon the perception of the message; b) reconstruct the message code; c) engage in the process of decrypting the transmitted signal.

Proper understanding of semiotic codes, conditions of their use and dominance in specific sociocultural contexts allows a translator to understand better the life and culture of the original language. Studying of semiotic codes is necessary in increasing the professional competence of a translator, it involves the expansion of worldview and perception of values, avoiding textual misunderstandings.

Key words: semiotics, semiotic codes, socio-semantic information, socio-cultural contexts.

Кузенко Г. М. ОСМИСЛЕННЯ СЕМІОТИЧНИХ КОДІВ В ІНТЕРПРЕТАЦІЇ ТЕКСТУ

Сьогоднішні семіотичні наукові розвідки спрямовані на вивчення семіотичного підходу в інтерпретації тексту, як феномена мови, що передає соціально-семантичну інформацію, тобто знання. Код представляє собою систему семіотичних знаків, їх значень, правил комбінування або правил заміни одних знаків іншими, відомих адресанту й адресату для здійснення успішної комунікації. Код- шифр для отримувача інформації виступає ключем декодування повідомлення. Без знання коду-ключа сприйняття повідомлення стає неможливим й спонукає адресата: а) відмовитися від сприйняття повідомлення; б) реконструювати код повідомлення; в) зайнятися процесом дешифрування сигналу, що передається. Декодування повідомлення може вимагати великих інтелектуальних зусиль й часу, витрачених на його «відтворення».

Семіотичне тлумачення коду передбачає виокремлення відносин між знаком і об'єктом; знаком і текстом, що забезпечує розкриття смислу мовного знака; знаками у тексті, що відображають соціальні, історично та культурно зумовлені зв'язки об'єктів, характерні для певного типу дискурсу.

Системи кодів, які використовуються адресантом і адресатом, різні, тому в процесі перекладу ми отримуємо не одну точну копію оригіналу, а одну з його можливих інтерпретацій. Таким чином, вихідний текст і цільовий лише відносно ідентичні. Головне завдання перекладача - не втратити інваріантну сутність першоджерела.

Ключові слова: семіотика, семіотичні коди, соціально-семантична інформація, соціокультурні контексти.

Statement of the research problem

semiotic sign text communication

Today's semiotic scientific explorations are aimed at studying the semiotic approach to the text, concentrating on its semantic nature and trying to interpret the text as a phenomenon of the language that conveys socio-semantic information, that is, knowledge (єпютцрп). Text interpretation as a cognitive process establishes relations of understanding between a man and the fragment of the world, the interpreter and the text of culture. The result of this process is an analytical description of the perceived object. The external unfolding of the world picture (macrocosm) and internal (microcosm) is constructed in the theory of language on the basis of all available knowledge at the moment.

Man's behavior, conditions of his intellectual and social life, family relations, relations in the sphere of production and exchange indicate the use of several systems of signs. First of all, the signs of speech that one acquires in the beginning of conscious life; signs of language and writing; signs of "politeness", "gratitude", communication in all its varieties and hierarchical relationships; signs regulating the movement of vehicles; "external" signs indicating the social status of a person (man, woman, military, sailor, etc.); "money" signs - indicators of economic life; ceremonial, religious signs; signs of art in all their varieties (music, theater, fine arts, etc.). Even if we limit ourselves to the empirical list, it becomes clear that our entire lives are connected with various networks of signs. Signs are generated and propagated by an inherent need that seems to meet the demands of our mental organization.

Semiotic affinity of language and culture makes it possible to use common tools in the study of language and culture, allows to study the functioning of texts in the national language, national culture, in public and social life. All this serves as a basis for considering culture as a particular semiotic level. Another argument for the consideration of text in the context of culture is the unique role of man in the world in general and in the world of culture in particular: man is the creator of the text and at the same time its object is the object; the person is the author and the addressee of the text at the same time. Anthropocentricity is an essential feature of cultural works.

The aim of the paper. The aim of the paper is to understand and determine basic semiotic codes used by translators in decoding and interpreting adequately writer's creative idea in texts.

Analysis of recent research and publications

It should be emphasized that, despite the existence of a number of works on the application of sign science in translation studies (J. M. Lotman, B. Lumbera, D. Gile), this issue is still poorly understood. Semiotic studies form the basis of an interpretive approach to the text, alternative to linguistic, which philosophy is the permanent unfolding of semiosis, that is, the generation of new meanings. However, sometimes semiotic systems of the author and a translator do not coincide, and therefore the former causes difficulties in translation process. The presence of such complexities necessitated researching the aspect of interpretation of marked signs and transformation of codes.

Many researchers such as S. Bassnett, B. Hatim interpret translation science as "translational linguistics", which studies translation processes as linguistic and analyzes the underlying linguistic mechanisms: conditions, structure and process of information exchange using a sign system. The basic terms of this theory are "code", "code change" [2, с. 76]. The task of "translation linguistics" is the invariant preservation of the information content of the translated text.

Presenting main material

The great advantage of semiotics over other approaches to interlingual communication is that it deals with all kinds of sign codes, especially language as the most complex of all sign systems used by a man. No holistic approach to translation excludes semiotics as a fundamental discipline in character encoding and decoding. The human lifeworld, which has been defined as a medium for encoding (decoding) and decoding (interpreting) meanings, is at the same time a medium of semiosis in which participants operate codes [5].

In order to understand the essence of semiotic phenomena in society, it is necessary to consider in more detail how a person perceives and processes information. The interpretation of any information about the real world is closely linked to the problem of understanding and the problem of translation as a kind of intercultural interaction of societies.

Knowledge required in translation process includes linguistic and encyclopedic knowledge. Language skills include the individual's knowledge of the semantic, grammatical, pragmatic features of a source language and a target one. The translator's encyclopedic knowledge includes knowledge of the world, in other words, empirical knowledge that plays an important role in the process of interpretation.

Information is always of a symbolic nature and transmitted by signs. The process of transmitting, storing, processing and transcoding information in nature and society proceeds with the use of sign systems or extra-system (isolated) signs and therefore is semiotic. Socio-semantic information is a variety of messages (linguistic, musical, dance, visual, etc.) created, received, stored and transmitted by humans to one another. This information is called "semantic" because it has a temporary or historical meaning and promotes the development of both individuals and society as a whole. The meaning of social information is manifested in social-sign communication - communication through signs and sign systems.

The content of socio-semantic information is divided into two main types: stored (historically significant, cultural) and online (current) information.

Stored information includes folklore, mythology, basic philosophical systems, ethics, linguistic knowledge, history, mathematics, literary and scientific knowledge in all branches of science. Online information includes texts of media, documents, various assumptions, projects in the field of logistics, relevant to a specific situation, not included in the culture, they disappear with disappearance of the situation.

Semiotics thematizes culture in terms of the results of human activity. The results are marked in some way, which is reflected in their semiotic status. The marking of the sign of human culture is realized in three functional correlative settings: the transmission of absolute, holistic and anthropological information. Information failure of any system is a condition of being a culture and a true cause of culturogenesis in all its forms.

The interpretation of texts creates the conditions for obtaining absolute, complete and anthropological information and may claim the status of paradigms of different cultural content. On the one hand, they can be scientific, ethical or religious paradigms, on the other, aesthetic.The process ofinterpretingaliterary text provides communication and understanding, its complexity is determined primarily by the complexity of the semantic structure of the text, which requires intellectual understanding.

The level of development of a man and society, expressed in the types and forms of organization of social life, as well as in the created material and spiritual values, is called culture. The whole set of material and spiritual values of culture can be interpreted from the semiotic point of view as a text reflecting, on the one hand, the results of social and practical activity and, on the other, the attitude of society to these results. In other words, culture can be understood as a text, which is the result of displaying to the public consciousness the social information received both in the process of material production and by means of all existing sign systems, and the context - the social consciousness in all its manifestations (science, law, morality, ethics, art, religion, etc.). At the level of individual consciousness, each work exists in the dialectical unity of text and context, but in this case the latter reflects the attitude of the individual to the outside world.

Language, art, mythology, rituals, traditions are integral sign systems that have their own codes that encrypt the meanings of culture. Cultural codes are part of a secondary modeling system that builds on the primary system (natural language). Generation of sign, object-shaped information by the addresser (author) and its perception, rethinking, transcoding by a translator from one code system to another, is a complex thinking process.

Creative thinking, as scientists have long observed, often proceeds in a non-verbal form and unconsciously. To describe a person's ability to communicate and manage their behavior, use the term "thesaurus". Thesaurus (from the Greek thesauros - a treasure, a stock) is a useful inside information of the system about itself and the environment. In a broad sense, a thesaurus means a set of knowledge accumulated by a person, some collective or society as a whole. In the narrow sense, a thesaurus is called a dictionary explaining the meaning of terms and phrases in a particular subject area. The success of the communication process depends on the thesaurus of the communicators.

The complexity of the structural-semantic and communicative organization of the text, its correlation as a component of literary-aesthetic communication with the author, reader, reality and character are the reason for the multiplicity of approaches to its study. Thus, textual activity is a multifaceted and multicomponent psychological and intellectual communication, which also performs an aesthetic function and is considered as literary communication [1, c. 52].

In research on the problems of typology of text, the essence of literary communication is revealed precisely with the main components of textual activity:

1) the presence of a communication purpose, including the sender of the information or message, the author of the literary work, the message itself (literary text) and the recipient of the message (reader);

2) the character of the message (text) that requires the previous encoding the characters of the text by the sender and their subsequent decoding by the recipient;

3) a conditioned system for the use of signs, on the one hand, with extra-textual reality (the principle of reflection of reality in art) and with the artistic tradition as a system of accepted literary conventions, on the other.

The latter two conditions contribute to the process of communication and allow a translator to interpret the literary text meaningfully on the basis of knowledge of language, own life experience and literary traditions [3].

The term code is a system of semiotic signs, their meanings, rules of combination or rules of replacement of one signs by others, known to the addresser and the addressee for successful communication. Different geographical conditions, social and economic status give rise to the everyday language of culture: food, rituals, attributes, housing, clothing, transport and more. The acquisition of code knowledge begins at birth, continues at school, different circumstances and conditions of life. Going into adulthood, a person has an individual set of codes, an individual intertext.

The systems of codes owned by "their" author and "alien" interpreter / translator are different. An important factor for interpretation is the extra- lingual situation ("deadlock"). Both the original and the translation have their meaningful contexts, which are directly dependent on the semiotic spaces of their cultures. The systems of codes used by the addresser and the addressee are different, that is why in the process of translation we receive not one exact copy of the original, but one of its possible interpretations. Thus, the source text and the target one are only relatively identical. The main task of the translator is not to lose the invariant essence of the primary source.

The success of interpretation is determined, first of all, by the processes of encoding and decoding the message, which means choosing the appropriate code. The code for the recipient of information is the key to decoding the message. Without knowing the key code, the perception of the message becomes impossible and causes the recipient to: a) abandon the perception of the message; b) reconstruct the message code; c) engage in the process of decrypting the transmitted signal.

Decoding a message can take a great deal of intellectual effort and time to reproduce it. For example, replacing one letter with another, spelling the word backwards, changing the order of letters or their spaces, using the alphabetical order of their ordinal numbers, and more. Decoding text sometimes requires special knowledge and reading skills. These include, in particular, cross-reading. This means that the page should first read the middle word of the top line, then the bottom, and then the first and last word of the middle line. As a result, the cross turns out, reading every page so that the hidden message that the author wanted to convey in his book becomes clear.

More evidence has been adduced to support the idea of an adequate interpretation of the text is possible in the case of understanding the sign codes and the conventional links between them [4, c. 129]. The meaning of the sign depends on the code within which it is located. Codes integrate signs into systems, giving them conventionally-agreed meanings by a particular culture.

With the realization that interpretation of signs and symbols is conditioned by culture, it should be emphasized that culture is non-monolithic and depends on the subjectivity of individuals, social groups, institutions and society as a whole. Each kind of subject creates its own subculture, which characterized it. For example, there is a youth subculture, student, state as subculture, female and male subculture, subculture of city and village, etc. Each sign / symbol in different subcultures can be interpreted differently. Moreover, different interpretations of the same sign / symbol are given in different national or regional cultures and in different cultural and historical epochs.

The code, which represents the most important value of culture, is the main component of the socio-cultural paradigm and is passed on "inheritance" from generation to generation, perceived by the person naturally and meaningfully as a national value. Everything above allows to define the concept of "code of culture". The code of culture refers to the totality of meanings inherent in the symbolic system, common or complementary to different subcultures, stable, unchanging for the entire cultural era. Some researchers distinguish biomorphic and anthropomorphic cultural codes, where the latter includes a bodily cultural code. Others propose to distinguish six basic universal linguocultural codes: somatic, spatial, temporal, subject, biomorphic, spiritual.

Intending to convey the message, the addresser choosesthe language andtextcode. The communication channel - language and the transmitting device - is used to send the message. Receiving the message, the addressee decodes it by extracting information from the text interpreting one sign by another. The transfer process takes place in a specific background context that allows for additional meaning to be included in the message. The same statement can exist as: internal speech; real speech directly addressed to the speaker; replica in dialogue / monologue / polylogue.

The semiotic interpretation of the code implies the separation of relations between sign and object; sign and text that provides the disclosure of the meaning of the language sign; signs in the text that reflect the social, historically and culturally conditioned connections of objects that are characteristic of a particular type of discourse. Based on the communicative function of the sign, semiotic analysis allows to classify sign codes and distinguish the following types:

1. By extension, the codes can be general or copyrighted (for example, individual style code). Stylistic and personal codes (idiolects), often called subcodes, are used in conjunction with codes for semiotic text analysis.

2. According to the "nature of the arrangement" codes are divided into:

- bilateral (agreed by an addresser and an addressee);

- one-sided - installed by only one side (a transmitter or a receiver). Accordingly, the recipient may experience a situation of aberrant decoding - decrypting a message using a code different from that used to encode the message [4, c. 214].

3. Depending on the nature of the medium and scope, codes may be defined as:

- verbal (spelled out by natural language grammarians);

- non-verbal (rules for interpreting facial expressions, gestures, movements, etc.);

- behavioral codes ( spelled out with protocols, rituals, role playing and sports games);

- mass media codes (including photos, television, cinema, radio, newspapers and magazines);

- regulatory codes (traffic rules, professional codes of various fields of activity, etc.);

- aesthetic codes, genre, stylistic codes used in the field of artistic creativity. These codes act as conventions for the creation of texts, executive practices. Understanding of such codes requires belonging to a particular culture; their ignorance prevents from interpreting the message correctly.

4. The code structure can be simple / complex.

According to a functional approach for describing codes they can be distinguished:

- codes of perception or recognition, that play in memory of the object marked in the message. These include, iconic, touch and other codes;

- information transfer codes include verbal, musical, artistic, anthropological, stylistic codes;

- tone codes of the connotation system with an additional, clarifying value [4, c. 275].

From the foregoing, it follows that sign codes are invariably linked to the concept of a convention or pre-arrangement that ensures code stability over time. However, codes are not completely static systems: their change over time may be due to historical and socio-cultural reasons. The code reduces the entropy or semantic uncertainty of the system. This uncertainty is created by a variety of simultaneous decisions, none of which can be considered to be the only one true. Excessive semiotization also increases textual entropy.

It is out of the question that all of the codes listed correspond in general to the key types of knowledge necessary for effective use in decoding and interpretation of the source text by any translator. The use of aesthetic and individually authored codes in artistic texts, which often do not have a general conventional nature, is obvious. On the contrary, the author creates a situation of deliberate ambiguity of the message and therefore the text "suggests" the reader / translator to use the necessary or own code for decoding.

Consequently, individualization interpretation of a literary text is unquestionable, its range is determined by the amount of associative called bonds laid down in the text (both explicit and implicit) arising in its perception. They can be predicted and explained through the real, historical, or fictional world. Therefore, in hermeneutics, there is a very just and true principle called the "principle of infinite interpretation." It suggests that every stage of interpretation may seem complete, but that is until a new approach with new methods is applied [6, c. 664].

Conclusions

The process of perception, understanding a text is influenced by the individual experienceofatranslator, thepeculiarityofhis thinking, activity and associativity. Associativity always depends on education, intellectual and spiritual levels of mind and character, orientation philosophical, religious, political and other interests of a translator.

The literary text is interpreted differently not only historically but also depending on the recipient's own culture - different cultures perceive the text differently and even representatives of the same culture perceive the text differently depending on their temperament, character, experience, age or education. Certain scenes of the artwork are actualized, others become out of date and forever forgotten.

The semantic completeness expressed in the signs of reality is a significant feature of the text. Unlike the utterance, the text enters the sociocultural communicative space and time, filling them with meaning.Theconceptofthetextintermsofthesemiotics of culture should be at least twice coded. First, as a message and second, as a metamessage, related to genre unity and communicatively aware.

The text objectifies the author's opinion, embodies his creative intent, imparts knowledge and conceptions of man and the world, taking them beyond the author's consciousness and making them other people's property. Thus, the text is not autonomous and selfsufficient, it is the main but not the only component of textual (linguistic and mental) activity. The most important components of this activity, in addition to the text, are the author (addresser ofthe text), the reader (addressee), the reflected reality, knowledge of which is transmitted in the text, and the language system from which the author chooses the linguistic means that allow him to adequately embody a creative idea.

Summarizing everything mentioned above we can admit that the code is a set of rules or restrictions that ensure the speech activity of the natural language or any other sign system; the code serves to ensure communication, so it must be understood by all participants in the communication process, and therefore must be of a conventional nature. Proper understanding of codes, conditions of their use and dominance in specific socio-cultural contexts allows a translator to understand better the life and culture ofthe original language and, quite logically, the study of semiotic codes is necessary in increasing the professional competence of a translator, it involves the expansion of worldview and perception of values, avoiding textual misunderstandings, because each text is a character system organized by codes and subcodes that reflect certain values, attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, people's understanding.

References

2. Bassnett S. Translation studies (4th ed.). London : Routledge, 2014. - 312 p.

3. Gile D. Basic Concepts and Models for Interpreting and Translation Training, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2005.

4. Lobodanov A. Semiotics of Arts. London: IASHE, 2016. - 462 p.

5. Lotman J. M. Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1990.

6. Lumbera B. Not language alone: Translation and culture. Kritika Kultura, (23), 2014. - P 662-667.

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