Introduction

We have already discussed how translation or carrying across the meaning/message of one text into another can occur within a language system. What happens if the transference is from one semiotic system like a novel to another semiotic system like film? This is also called translation within the cultural matrix of translation studies, but not much attention has been paid to it by theorists maybe because this sort of intersemiotic translation was traditionally thought of as adaptation. The thin line dividing adaptation from translation again becomes a thorny issue here. However, it remains a fact that we are familiar with the idea of translation from one medium to another, like the epics or episodes in epics being ‘reborn’ as dance or music. It is also a fact that we have very rarely thought of Wagner’s opera The Ring of the Niebelungs as a translation of the Nordic legend of the Niebelungs. It has been traditionally thought of as a composition based on those legends. Similar is the case of Meera bhajans that draw from stories of Krishna or the case of most of Indian classical dance and music that borrow from the epics and puranas. However, the most obvious example of intersemiotic translation is that of from the print medium to celluloid – novel/short story/play to film. This is an area that has been worked upon, but not by many in the field of translation studies.  
   
The translation from one medium to another will have all the attendant questions usually faced by a translator between two languages. But with change in medium come other issues like the suitability of certain conventions of one medium to the other. What is effective in written language might not be amenable to the visual language of cinema. Literature affords scope to elaborate on the intensely private thoughts of an individual. How do you convey the thought processes through the medium of cinema where visuals are perhaps more important than words? This sort of dilemma will present itself before any translator between two mediums of art.