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.^[1] The indeterminacy of translation is also discussed at length in his Ontological Relativity.^[2]

Three aspects of indeterminacy arise, of which two relate to indeterminacy of translation.^[3] 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

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.^[1]

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.^[4]
— 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"^[5]

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.^[6] 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.

Analytic-synthetic distinction

In Quine's view, the indeterminacy of translation leads to the inability to separate analytic statements whose validity lies in the usage of language from synthetic statements, those which assert facts about the world. The argument hinges on the role of synonymy in analytic statements, "A natural suggestion, deserving close examination, is that the synonymy of two linguistic forms consists simply in their interchangeability in all contexts without change of truth value".^[7] However, Quine argues, because of the indeterminacy of translation, any attempt to define 'analyticity' on a substitutional basis invariably introduces assumptions of the synthetic variety, resulting in a circular argument. Thus, this kind of substitutability does not provide an adequate explanation of synonyms. Quine's final assertion is:

It is obvious that truth in general depends on both language and extralinguistic fact. ...Thus one is tempted to suppose in general that the truth of a statement is somehow analyzable into a linguistic component and a factual component. Given this supposition, it next seems reasonable that in some statements the factual component should be null; and these are the analytic statements. But, for all its a priori reasonableness, a boundary between analytic and synthetic statements simply has not been drawn. That there is such a distinction to be drawn at all is an unempirical dogma of empiricists, a metaphysical article of faith.^[7]
— Willard v. O. Quine, Two dogmas of empiricism, p. 64

For one philosopher's view of this argument and a brief exploration of other views, see Putnam.^[8]

Reception

Quine's work has been influential and controversial.

W. V. O. Quine's contention that translation is indeterminate has been among the most widely discussed and controversial theses in modern analytical philosophy. It is a standard-bearer for one of the late twentieth century's most characteristic philosophical preoccupations: the skepticism about semantic notions which is also developed in Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein on rules... and which many have read into Putnam's ‘model-theoretic’ assault on realism...[Cross references to chapters 15 and 17 omitted]^[9]
— Crispin Wright, The indeterminacy of translation

According to Hilary Putnam:

Chapter 2 of Quine's Word and Object contains what may well be the most fascinating and the most discussed philosophical argument since Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of the Categories”. On one page Quine...writes 'There can be no doubt that rival systems of analytical hypotheses can fit the totality of dispositions to speech behavior as well, and still specify mutually incompatible translations of countless sentences insusceptible of independent control'.^[10]
— Hilary Putnam, The refutation of conventionalism, p. 159

Quine's views on indeterminacy of translation led to extended debate over Carnap's analytic/synthetic distinction, and to Inwagen's coining of the word meta-ontology to designate the resulting (and continuing) debate about the purpose and importance of ontology itself.^[11]^[12]

References

^ ^a ^b Willard Quine (2013). "Chapter 2: Translation and meaning". Word and Object (New ed.). MIT Press. pp. 23–72. ISBN 0262518317.
^ Willard v. O. Quine (1969). "Chapter 2: Ontological relativity". Ontological relativity and other essays. Columbia University Press. pp. 26–68. ISBN 0231083572.
^ Willard Quine (2008). "Chapter 31: Three indeterminacies". Confessions of a Confirmed Extentionalist: And Other Essays. Harvard University Press. pp. 368–386. ISBN 0674030842. A lecture "Three Indeterminacies," presented at the Quine symposium at Washington University in April 1988.
^ Peter Hylton (April 30, 2010). Edward N. Zalta, ed (ed.). "Willard van Orman Quine". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition). {{cite web}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
^ "holophrastic". Mirriam-Webster on-line. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2013-05-14.
^ Robert Martin (1987). "Chapter 6: Radical Translation". The Meaning of Language (6th ed.). MIT Press. pp. 53 ff. ISBN 0262631083.
^ ^a ^b Willard v O Quine (1980). "Chapter 2: W.V. Quine: Two dogmas of empiricism". In Harold Morick, ed (ed.). Challenges to empiricism. Hackett Publishing. p. 60. ISBN 0915144905. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help) Published earlier in From a Logical Point of View, Harvard University Press (1953)
^ Hilary Putnam (2001). "The analytic and the synthetic". In Dagfinn Fllesdal, ed (ed.). The philosophy of Quine. Taylor & Francis. pp. 252 ff. ISBN 0815337388. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)
^ Crispin Wright (1999). "Chapter 16: The indeterminacy of translation". In Bob Hale, Crispin Wright, eds (ed.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Language. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 397. ISBN 0631213260. {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
^ Putnam. H. (March, 1974). "The refutation of conventionalism". Noûs. 8 (1): 25 ff. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) Reprinted in Putnam, H. (1979). "Chapter 9: The refutation of conventionalism". Philosophical Papers; Volume 2: Mind, Language and Reality. Cambridge University Press. pp. 153–191. ISBN 0521295513. Quote on p. 159.
^ Peter Van Inwagen (1998). "Meta-ontology" (PDF). Erkenntnis. 48: 233–250.
^ Peter van Inwagen (2008). "Chapter 6: Quine's 1946 lecture on nominalism". In Dean Zimmerman, ed (ed.). Oxford Studies in Metaphysics : Volume 4. Oxford University Press. pp. 125 ff. ISBN 0191562319. Quine has endorsed several closely related theses that I have referred to, collectively, as his "meta-ontolgy". These are...those of his theses that pertain to the topic "ontological commitment" or "ontic commitment". {{cite book}}: |editor= has generic name (help)