Kobus Marais’s monograph Translation Theory and Development Studies: A Complexity Theory Approach carves out new territory in translation studies, namely what might be called translational development studies – but it also seeks to fuse that new subdiscipline with an invigorated complexity- theoretical framework. This article seeks to promote and advance Marais’s project by offering correctives to two areas where his own theoretical framework remains somewhat blurry – in fact, undeveloped – namely the translator’s agency and social constructivism. The article explores an emergentist theory of “icosis” (somatic plausibilization) as a solution that, like Marais’s own approach, is steeped in Peircean semeiotic.