Before We Translate Languages, We Translate Signs: Peirce, Whorf, and Jakobson's Theory of Translation

Introduction

Translation is commonly understood as the passage from one language into another. Roman Jakobson opens On Linguistic Aspects of Translation from a very different starting point. Before discussing bilingual dictionaries or lexical equivalence, he offers a striking definition of linguistic meaning itself: "the meaning of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alternative sign" (Jakobson, 1959, p. 232). Borrowed directly from Charles Sanders Peirce's theory of signs, this claim transforms the scope of the essay. Translation is no longer a specialized linguistic practice but the very process through which signs become intelligible.

Read from this perspective, Jakobson's discussion of lexical equivalence, Benjamin Lee Whorf's linguistic relativity, and even the familiar expressions sunrise and sunset all serve a single philosophical purpose. They illustrate that understanding is inseparable from interpretation, and interpretation always proceeds by producing further signs.

Peirce's Interpretant and the Meaning of Signs

Jakobson openly acknowledges his debt to Peirce, whom he calls "the deepest inquirer into the essence of signs" (Jakobson, 1959, p. 232). For Peirce, a sign never delivers its meaning immediately. It becomes intelligible only through an interpretant—that is, another sign that develops or clarifies the first. Meaning therefore does not reside in an object waiting to be named; it unfolds through an ongoing process of interpretation.

Jakobson adopts this insight almost verbatim. The meaning of a word is not another object but another sign capable of rendering the first more explicit. Every explanation, paraphrase, definition, or reformulation is therefore an act of translation. Long before we translate between English and Russian, we are already translating signs into further signs within the same language.

This premise quietly redefines the entire field of translation. Rather than treating translation as the replacement of one word by another, Jakobson presents it as the semiotic process through which understanding itself becomes possible.

Beyond Lexical Equivalence

This broader conception explains Jakobson's famous discussion of cheese and сыр. He writes that "there is ordinarily no full equivalence between code-units, while messages may serve as adequate interpretations of alien code-units or messages" (Jakobson, 1959, p. 233). The distinction between code-units and messages is decisive.

English includes cottage cheese within the broader category cheese. Standard Russian distinguishes сыр from творог, treating the latter as a separate category. Consequently, the Russian request "принеси сыру и творогу" is entirely natural, whereas its literal English rendering—"bring cheese and cottage cheese"—sounds redundant.

The example is not really about dairy products. It demonstrates that languages organize conceptual experience differently. Because lexical fields do not coincide perfectly, translation cannot rely upon mechanical substitution. What can be translated adequately are not isolated words but messages interpreted within their linguistic and cultural contexts.

Whorf and the Limits of Linguistic Relativity

Having established that languages classify experience differently, Jakobson turns to Benjamin Lee Whorf. At first glance, Whorf's observations might seem to support the conclusion that translation is fundamentally impossible. Jakobson summarizes this position through Whorf's fictional "Mr. Everyman," who reasons that speakers of different languages inhabit different worlds because their languages formulate facts differently.

Jakobson rejects this conclusion without denying linguistic diversity. His response is unexpectedly simple. Following the Russian Revolution, some reformers proposed abandoning expressions such as sunrise and sunset because they reflected an outdated, Ptolemaic picture of the cosmos. Jakobson notes that modern speakers continue using these expressions without believing that the sun literally revolves around the earth.

The example illustrates an essential point. Language does not imprison thought. Ordinary expressions can always be reformulated in ways that make their meaning more precise. We readily translate the sun rises into the earth has rotated until the sun becomes visible above the horizon. The scientific explanation does not replace the ordinary expression; it interprets it.

Translation as the Logic of Semiosis

Jakobson's most revealing statement appears near the end of this discussion: "Any sign is translatable into a sign in which it appears to us more fully developed and precise" (Jakobson, 1959, p. 234). This sentence extends Peirce's notion of the interpretant into a general theory of translation.

The significance of the claim reaches well beyond bilingual communication. Every definition, gloss, scientific explanation, and philosophical clarification produces a new sign that unfolds the meaning of an earlier one. Translation thus becomes another name for semiosis—the continuous generation of interpretants through which meaning develops.

Whorf's observations remain valuable because they remind us that languages differ in the ways they formulate experience. Jakobson accepts that diversity but refuses to equate difference with incommensurability: “Both the practice and the theory of translation abound with intricacies, and from time to time attempts are made to sever the Gordian knot by proclaiming the dogma of untranslatability” (Jakobson, 1959, p. 234).

If every sign is capable of generating further interpretants, then no linguistic formulation constitutes the final expression of meaning. Translation is not defeated by linguistic diversity; it exists because of it.

Conclusion

On Linguistic Aspects of Translation is often approached as a foundational text in translation studies. It is equally a contribution to the philosophy of signs. By adopting Peirce's conception of the interpretant, Jakobson reconceives translation as the mechanism through which meaning itself is produced. His disagreements with Whorf concern neither the existence of linguistic diversity nor the importance of conceptual differences, but the conclusion drawn from them. Languages undoubtedly organize experience in distinct ways, yet every sign remains open to further interpretation. Before we translate languages, we translate signs.

References

Jakobson, R. (1959). On linguistic aspects of translation. In R. A. Brower (Ed.), On Translation (pp. 232–239). Harvard University Press.

Peirce, C. S. (1998). The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings (Vol. 2). Indiana University Press. (Original works published 1893–1913)

Whorf, B. L. (1956). Language, Thought, and Reality. MIT Press.