The proposal for a Semiology of Translation is based on the semiological principles reserved for language by the linguist Émile Benveniste. Translation is considered through the relationship between languages established by the translator, to which the Semiology of Language and Enunciation bear witness.

The former does so through the principle of unities of meaning, present in language's modes of signification, the semiotic and the semantic, whose significance gives language the status of an interpretant of society; the latter, through the semantic properties that highlight linguistic differences in discourse. The hypothesis of a Semiology of Translation is supported by the fact that translation is traversed by language, borrowing its significant functioning, and by the semiotic/semantic relationship that offers translation a specific mode of signification.

Benveniste's thesis that the semantic is the possibility of translation and the semiotic is the impossibility is proven by taking the original and the translation as two speech-languages that play a role in a relationship of interpretance, where the second interprets the first and brings out the translation units that govern the laws of the translation sign system. .