Jun Yu will present some of her ongoing PhD thesis work on "intersemiotic translation" in a broad sense, with the target texts being expressed in LEGO bricks. Theoretically, the approach draws from both social semiotics and cognitive semiotics, and should provide fruitful ground for discussion. The talk will begin from 15:15, but welcome as usual in room H402 or on the zoom link, from 15:00.

Translating culture-specific items (Franco Aixela 1996) always faces challenges when they are translated interlingually, i.e. from one language to another. With whatever strategies or techniques, compromises are hard to avoid, which very likely leads to a loss in the transference of the source connotations and causes difficulties for the target audience to grasp. However, an intersemiotic translation (i.e. from one semiotic system to another, e.g. Jakobson 1959; Sonesson 2014) of culture-specific items like in the case of LEGO Spring Festival playsets has a significant difference. Here the abstract source "texts" are directly translated into target messages that are not actualized textually, but physically as "items" in forms of miniatures/icons.

In this presentation, I analyse eight major LEGO Spring Festival playsets from 2020 to 2022 and their related materials. I discuss how verbal, visual/audiovisual, and physical elements in buildable toys interact with one another in the meaning-making and translation process; how tactile elements bring different dynamics to the translation process, and the roles of translators and recipients; how the translation of culture-specific items is different in the scope of intersemiotic translation when the sense of touch is involved; plus, what cognitive sciences may further this study.