Indeterminacy of translation

The indeterminacy of translation is a thesis propounded by 20th century American analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book Word and Object, which gathered together and refined much of Quine's previous work on subjects other than formal logic and set theory. The indeterminacy of translation is also discussed at length in his Ontological Relativity.

Three aspects of indeterminacy arise, of which two relate to indeterminacy of translation. The three indeterminacies are (i) inscrutability of reference, and (ii) holophrastic indeterminacy, and (iii) the underdetermination of scientific theory. The last of these, not discussed here, refers to Quine's assessment that evidence alone does not dictate the choice of a scientific theory. The first refers to indeterminacy in interpreting individual words or sub-sentences. The second refers to indeterminacy in entire sentences or more extensive portions of discourse.

Indeterminacy of reference

Main article: Inscrutability of reference

Consider Quine's example of the word "gavagai" uttered by a native upon seeing a rabbit. The linguist could do what seems natural and translate this as "Lo, a rabbit." But other translations would be compatible with all the evidence he has: "Lo, food"; "Let's go hunting"; "There will be a storm tonight" (these natives may be superstitious); "Lo, a momentary rabbit-stage"; "Lo, an undetached rabbit-part." Some of these might become less likely – that is, become more unwieldy hypotheses – in the light of subsequent observation. Others can only be ruled out by querying the natives: An affirmative answer to "Is this the same gavagai as that earlier one?" will rule out "momentary rabbit stage," and so forth. But these questions can only be asked once the linguist has mastered much of the natives' grammar and abstract vocabulary; that in turn can only be done on the basis of hypotheses derived from simpler, observation-connected bits of language; and those sentences, on their own, admit of multiple interpretations, as we have seen.

Holophrastic indeterminacy

Main article: Holophrastic indeterminacy

The second kind of indeterminacy, which Quine sometimes refers to as holophrastic indeterminacy, is another matter. Here the claim is that there is more than one correct method of translating sentences where the two translations differ not merely in the meanings attributed to the sub-sentential parts of speech but also in the net import of the whole sentence. This claim involves the whole language, so there are going to be no examples, perhaps except of an exceedingly artificial kind.

— Peter Hylton, Willard van Orman Quine; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

It is confusing that Quine's choice of meaning for 'holophrastic', contrasting it with sub-sentential phrases, appears to run counter to its accepted meaning in linguistics, "expressing a complex of ideas in a single word or in a fixed phrase"

Quine considers the methods available to a field linguist attempting to translate a hitherto unknown language he calls Arunta. He suggests that there are always different ways one might break a sentence into words, and different ways to distribute functions among words. Any hypothesis of translation could be defended only by appeal to context, by determining what other sentences a native would utter. But the same indeterminacy will appear there: any hypothesis can be defended if one adopts enough compensatory hypotheses about other parts of the language.

General remarks

Indeterminacy of translation also applies to the interpretation of speakers of one's own language, and even to one's past utterances. This does not lead to skepticism about meaning – either that meaning is hidden and unknowable, or that words are meaningless. However, when combined with a (more or less behavioristic) premise that everything that can be learned about the meaning of a speaker's utterances can be learned from his behavior, the indeterminacy of translation may be felt to suggest that there are no such entities as "meanings"; in this connection, it is highlighted (or claimed) that the notion of synonymy has no operational definition. But saying that there are no "meanings" is not to say that words are not meaningful or significant.

Quine denies an absolute standard of right and wrong in translating one language into another; rather, he adopts a pragmatic stance toward translation, that a translation can be consistent with the behavioral evidence. And while Quine does admit the existence of standards for good and bad translations, such standards are peripheral to his philosophical concern with the act of translation, hinging upon such pragmatic issues as speed of translation, and the lucidity and conciseness of the results. The key point is that more than one translation meets these criteria, and hence that no unique meaning can be assigned to words and sentences.

References

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See also

• Analytic–synthetic distinction
• Duhem–Quine thesis
• Meaning (linguistics)
• Meta-ontology
• Naturalized epistemology
• Philosophy of language
• Radical interpretation
• Radical translation
• Two Dogmas of Empiricism
• Willard Quine