This research aims to scrutinize the intrinsic nature of translation per se and the role of situated cognition in transdisciplinarily examining Jakobson’s translation typology (1959/2004). With the fundamentally and intrinsically translativity-centered and cognition-sensitive—thus, global-biosemiosis-based—perspective(s) employed in order to develop and rethink the paradigm of translation per se (Lim 2014b), this paper proposes to revisit the Jakobsonian tripartite taxonomy in a centripetally (trans-) semiotic way, especially and significantly, by considering the translative nature of the sign (Petrilli 2003) and the experiential situatedness of the translatorial paradigm (Lim 2013a). In employing the (intra-/ inter-/ trans-) corporeally interpretive (thus, situated embodiment-/ enactment-sensitive) cognitivist approach (Lim 2013a, 2014b) and analyzing the sociohistorical and linguisticocultural aspects of Jakobson’s personal experiences accordingly, it argues that the specific notions of (meta) translation and translatoriality should be viewed as diverse kinds of corporeal translation products (that is, target texts) of the theorist’s situated cognition that is based on and/ or sensitive to the then explicit activities, processes (or procedures), and phenomena of translation.
In the actual translative cognitivist analysis of Jakobson’s pre-1959 life experiences, a reliable and substantial list of information comes to support—if not prove—the research’s main hypothesis that the Jakobsonian typology is not the meta translation theory made via a purely scientific investigation but, rather, Jakobson’s translatoriality-sensitive conceptual translation on the notion of translation (proper) heavily and multidimensionally influenced by his own bodily experiences situated in certain specific historicities.
Finally, it concludes that, with Petrilli’s (2003) paradigm of the sign as the translative process (and vice versa) taken into consideration, (a) situated cognition—as the unique transcorporeal and transsemiotic dynamics of the respective (bio-) translator himself/ herself—helps fathom what translation is and does across various borders; (b) the transdiciplinary follow-up research on translativity and translatoriality on a larger scale of the biosemiosphere is needed and, also, will be helpful (cf. Lim 2013a); (c) the Jakobsonian translation typology now needs and calls for a new(er) understanding.