Interpreting, Communication and Animal Welfare: An Ecosemiotic Analysis of Interspecies Translation

Animal welfare work is, arguably, the key locus of interspecific communication and offers a most valuable opportunity to understand what is involved in intersemiotic transmutations. As such, this book introduces the reader to an in-depth understanding of such transmutations by supplementing relevant semiotic and translation theory with data obtained from equine-focused animal welfare outreach events in South Africa. By acknowledging the influence of biosemiotics and ecosemiotics on translation and interpreting studies, this book, in a non-anthropocentric manner, explores the social and cultural construction of living beings and the impact of this construction on their treatment by a particular society. As a result, it sheds light on instances of not only interlingual, intralingual and intersemiotic translation, but also interspecies translation, organisms’ agency, and translational aids that allow for translation to take place.