Sociosemiotic perspective

This perspective views communication as an act that involves numerous codes. Nida points out how the impact of a verbal message is not that of words alone, but of extralinguistic and paralinguistic aspects like the background of the speaker, his/her sincerity, knowledge and expertise etc. It is not as if people are conscious of these elements, but they play a vital role in their response to a statement. Here we see an interplay of verbal and nonverbal codes that go into the process of communication. These codes are present in written communication also and hence they have a role in translation.

Language is seen as a code that is embedded in the socio-cultural context and communication will be influenced by all these factors. Communication is seen as a dynamic activity, closely linked to the social customs and practices as well as individualistic peculiarities. It is also a reciprocal act – the sender awaits feedback from receptor through verbal and nonverbal codes. Translation that takes all these factors into account will be sensitive to source and receptor socio-lingual codes.

Nida outlines the advantages of the sociosemiotic approach:

1. It perceives language as the offshoot of a host of socio-cultural factors and hence rooted in the everyday world of reality, rather than in an ideal speaker community.

2. It can be verbally creative as its focus is on actually spoken language; it is not bound by reductive rules of language.

3. It does not conceive of language as a rigid system with clear cut boundaries and a well established meaning underlying it. It acknowledges the malleability of language and the indeterminacy of meaning.

4. It takes into account the interdisciplinary nature of codes, which tends to expand the boundaries of translation activity.