Epistemological positions

Abstract

This chapter deals with the epistemology of Translation Studies and intersemiotic translation. It does so from the perspective of the philosophy of science, reviewing the main epistemological traditions in the field in relation to entailments of a general theory of translation based on Peircean semiotics. Traditional, dichotomous and more recent complexity-oriented epistemologies are discussed against this background. In the second part of the chapter, epistemic pluralism is introduced as an approach that can both enable and be enabled by a general semiotic theory of translation. In particular, the discussion covers the implications for an empirical agenda based on epistemological critical realism and the articulation of semiotic categories into models amenable to empirical investigation.