A Study On Quine's Indeterminacy Of Translation Thesis

Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000) is one of the most important figures that have profoundly influenced western philosophy and logics in the twentieth century. In his Word and Object, he brings forward a famous theory, i.e., the indeterminacy of translation (IT), which introduces a new explanation about language and meaning and has aroused an extensive and violent argument in the last century. However, as the thesis is too abstract and lack of convictive evidences, it receives less attention in Chinese translation community. Even so, the IT thesis is still a field with great potential to tap in terms of academic study, implicating much positive influence on translation.This dissertation focuses on the objective evaluation on Quine's IT thesis. It investigates fully into the relations between the IT thesis and Quine's whole philosophical system (i.e., searching philosophical origins), offers the essential interpretations of this theory, and indicates its negative factors in contents and positive revelations on translation study. It argues that in Quine's philosophical system, translation is just regarded as a special case of language acquisition; the IT thesis involves little about real translation activities, the majority of which concentrates on Quine's ideas about language and meaning, and so it is reasonable to say that Quine shows no zeal for the research on the theory of linguistic translation. This thesis essentially originates in the transcendence over empirical evidences during the process of language acquisition, and the core of its content lies in the indeterminacy of meaning. But it tends not to demonstrate the impossibility of translation but the insufficiency of the external inclinations of behaviors in determining the meaning and reference. People's comprehension and mastery about the latter two aspects maintain a lot of subjective and hypothesizing elements, based on which there is no uniquely right translation in the world. It is helpful for translators to destroy the blind faith in the myth of "the existence of uniquely right translation" and to broaden their horizon in translation studies in the meantime.In this dissertation, there are four chapters in all. Chapter one outlines the maincontents of IT thesis, inclusive of the indeterminacy of meaning (IM) and the inscrutability of reference (IR). It gives brief but clear introduction to the scope and key concepts of this thesis, followed by different responses towards it from academic circles. In the end, it offers the thesis statement of this dissertation, too.Chapters two and three are the major parts. In chapter two, by analyzing Quine's major works and articles on linguistic philosophy, it draws the conclusion that the IT thesis is rooted deeply in his naturalistic-behavioristic conception and meaning skepticism, and is the logical development of the doctrine of underdetermination as well as of his moderate holism thesis. In chapter three, in accordance with the research on the theory, the paper offers the following five objective points on the understanding of this thesis: (1) radical translation is only a special case in language acquisition; (2) the indeterminacy exists in not only radical translation but the process of understanding one's mother tongue; (3) the IT thesis rejects to consider meaning as a mental entity; (4) problem on right or wrong translation actually does not exist; (5) the thesis reflects man's initiative and creativity in cognition.In the final chapter, it points out the deficiencies in Quine's statement, especially concerning with the ignorance of social, cultural and psychological factors in translation as well as the denial of meaning determinacy. Ultimately and the most importantly, it reveals the dialectical thinking manner in translation study and practice, which has a positive and stimulative function on translators, reminding them that language is both translatable and untranslatable, translation approaches are changeable and translation criteria should become multiple. Under the condition that diverse translation theories emerge in endlessly, we need to insist on a materialistic dialectics and research into the translation activities with multi-angles so as to have a deep and comprehensive understanding of translation itself.