ABSTRACT
This chapter poses a theoretical reassessment of Roman Jakobson’s widespread classification of translational relations, put forward in the seminal essay “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation” (1959), which distinguishes among intra-, interlingual, and intersemiotic translation. Albeit part of a tripartition, the two concepts of intra- and interlingual translation are central to this investigation. Their destabilisation patterns are studied through a sociolinguistic analysis of the South Slavic folk ballad Hasanaginica. The ballad precedes any linguistic codification – both early codification that standardised the Serbo-Croatian lects as one variety and more recent codification that standardises the lects separately (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin). Despite its archaic tone, the ballad is still understandable to speakers of multiple modern standards and contains a series of linguistic features mutual to them all. Owing to its ambiguity, the ballad escapes a clear linguistic classification in modern terms, which exposes the tentative nature of linguistic boundaries. A diachronic inquiry into linguistic boundaries, which takes a sociolinguistic approach, underlines the tension between intra- and interlingual translation. The chapter argues that intra- and interlingual translation are not stable relations, further asserting that they are contingent primarily on the way languages and their borders are defined.
