Multimodal, polysemiotic, multisemiotic: a necessary demarcation for semiotics and translation studies

Very often in semiotics, but also in translation studies, a conceptual confusion is found between the terms multimodal and polysemiotic/multisemiotic. Certainly, both terms connote the presence of several semiotic systems in a cultural text, but these semiotic systems, although different (e.g. image, color, lay out, typography, graphic design), may belong to the same semiotic mode (e.g. visual). This confusion has resulted in many scholars using one term instead of the other, with the term multimodality gaining ground in their preferences. It is also certain that the occasional conceptual proposals by the French semiotic school (interaction, fusion, jonction, synergie, syncrétisme, intersemioticité, transmutation, transposition, etc.) further complicate the issue of whether a semiotic phenomenon takes place between semiotic systems or modes. This issue is of particular concern to translation scholars who argue that if translation takes place in multimodal environments, why not use the term multimodal translation instead of intersemiotic translation, transmutation, or transposition. The paper aims to present a reflection on the two terms of semiotics, multimodal and polysemiotic/multisemiotic that are also widely used in translation studies and to define their boundaries so that they can be discernible even to scholars of other research fields with which semiotics comes into contact.