Indeterminacy of Translation

The indeterminacy of translation is Quine's thesis that no unique correct translation exists between any two languages — and more radically, that this indeterminacy holds even within a single language, where the 'translation' of one speaker's words into another's terms is equally underdetermined. Introduced in Word and Object (1960), the thesis holds that all possible behavioral evidence — including every utterance, every stimulus condition, every disposition to assent or dissent — is compatible with multiple, mutually incompatible translation schemes. There is no further fact that selects one scheme as correct.

The indeterminacy is not a consequence of insufficient data. It is structural: meaning is not the kind of thing that fixes a unique translation, because meaning itself is only ever specified relative to a translation scheme. Quine extended this insight in Ontological Relativity to the claim that reference itself — not just translation — is inscrutable without a background theory.

The practical implication is unsettling: when two speakers 'agree' on a claim, they are agreeing within a shared interpretation scheme, not accessing identical propositions. The scheme is never neutral. What looks like cross-theory agreement may be agreement within a theory about what both parties are saying — a loop that never makes contact with a theory-independent world.