Cloning of the Soul and Reproduction of the Self through Space and Time with Reference to Literature and Translation

Abstract

Texts’ souls have been cloned and their selves reproduced. History of ideas have been passed from generation to generation and translated from one language to another. In each generation, a text represents an author’s ideas that are enclosed in a time-space frame. Representation of ideas may take another turn with the death of the author: soul cloning or self-reproduction. Between cloning and reproduction, translation stands as a reconstruction of memory and a channel through which a rebirth of texts, loaded with ideas, concepts, traditions, and cultural practices, are transmitted. Between the source text and the target, text a third text lingers in space and time waiting to be reborn.  I argue that space and time play an important role in the emergence of the ever-evolving third text giving it an identity based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope. The third text is constructed by the readers’ interpretations rather than the authors’ intentions as Roland Barthes maintains. The author is dead, the reader is there to interpret and the text floats, mutates and is reshaped through time and space.