Jakobson’s essay establishes translation as a general semiotic operation rather than a secondary transfer between languages. Its iconic distinction among intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic translation dismantles the fantasy of pure equivalence by showing that meaning survives through reformulation, substitution and transformation. Translation is therefore not a transparent passage from one stable code to another but a productive act in which signs are reorganised within new systems of difference. Methodologically, Jakobson treats semantic adequacy as a relational achievement: what matters is not the identity of verbal units but the possibility of generating an intelligible equivalent under altered conditions. The essay’s wider contribution lies in its displacement of linguistic sovereignty. Meaning is never fully contained by an original expression; it depends upon further signs, cultural codes and interpretive conventions. This makes translation foundational to media theory, anthropology, epistemology and any account of how concepts travel across disciplines, institutions and publics.