Indian Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies | 57 Volume 2, Number 1, February, 2014, (IJCLTS) ISSN: 2321-8274, http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ Author(s): Abhinaba Chatterjee Published by: Indian Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies (IJCLTS) Issue Number: Volume 2, Number 1, February, 2014 ISSN Number: 2321-8274 Issue Editor:Rindon Kundu Editor: Mrinmoy Pramanick & Md Intaj Ali Website Link: http://ijclts.wordpress.com/ Locating Film Adaptation in Intersemiotic Space Film adaptation is a research area that remains surprisingly under-theorized and motion pictures inspired from literary works are still primarily evaluated in terms of fidelity to the “sacred” originals. Scant attention is given to filmmakers‟ innovative techniques, and no goals or aesthetic criteria have been clearly set for film adaptation. Yet, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Jacques Derrida and others have clearly demonstrated that an “original” work is an abstract notion hard to define and virtually impossible to duplicate in film. Since it is always possible to make a film out of a novel, the controversy at the basis of film adaptation is not feasibility. The debate rests essentially on a misconception of the objectives of film adaptation and on a misunderstanding of the transformation process. In 1992, in an article titled “Film (Adaptation) as Translation: Some Methodological Proposals”, Patrick Cattrysse urged scholars worldwide to expand the field of translation claiming that: “although some theoreticians try to broaden the concept of translation studies, this does not apparently happen without difficulties” (68). He concluded by adding: “there seems to be no valuable argument to keep reducing the concept of translation to mere cross- Although adaptations from literatures into visual/moving images have been in vogue, the area has remained under-theorized and continues to be studied in reference to its conformation to the original. With the positing of ‘Intersemiotic Translation’ by Roman Jakobson, as also with the increased theorization of translation processes, the area of film adaptation requires to be viewed in terms of a ‘transformation’ of the written text into visual and motion picture. This paper is an attempt to locate the process of film adaptation in the intersemiotic space in an endeavor to study and analyse them independently.