An Investigation Into The Research Of Quine's Thesis Of Indeterminacy Of Translation

Willard Van Orman Quine(1908-2000), one of the most important philosophers in the 20 th century, has accomplished great achievements in the field of analytic philosophy, logics, and philosophy of language, especially for his great work Word and Object, which was published in 1960, has aroused great attention since then on. The thesis of indeterminacy of translation put forward in this book has raised great concern both in the research field of language studies and philosophy studies. In this book, Quine carried out a thought experiment to prove the indeterminacy of translation. And the main contents of the proving include two parts: the first one is the inscrutability of reference, and the other one is the indeterminacy of meaning. Through the research of indeterminacy of translation, Quine further developed the theory of meaning, which has deeply affected the western world in the research field of language studies and philosophy studies. Quine's thesis of indeterminacy of translation does not tend to demonstrate the impossibility of translation, instead, it reminds people of the insufficiency of people's comprehension and mastery about the outside world for it contains many subjective and hypothesizing elements. When people try to understand the outside world with subjective views, it will surely result in the indeterminacy of translation. As a matter of fact, the target of translation studies does not lie in pursuing the unique interpretation. From the point of inscrutability of reference and indeterminacy of meaning, Quine enables us to break the fairy tale that there exists only one correct interpretation, which provides us with new aspect and method to learn about translation, and promotes the constant development of translation. Besides, the subjectivity of translator in translation activities that Quine has emphasized also enlightens us to pay more attention to the subject position of translators, which will promote a better understanding of the original text from the perspective of target readers,and benefit the field of translation studies to some degree.Existing for a very long time, due to its ambiguity, complexity, abstractness, and the lack of practical demonstration based on its thought experiment, Quine's thesis does not obtain such attention as other rich mature studies, let alone some systematical research or discussion. Therefore, with the aim of trying to learn more about the present situation and future development of the research on Quine's thesis, the present study tries to do a research on the related published papers about this thesis since its birth. Both synchronic and diachronic analysis are made on the collected data with the help of the method of content analysis.The present study is based on 153 papers published from 1960 to 2014 on journals recorded in major databases both at home and abroad, among which the domestic articles come from the published journals recorded in CNKI, and the international articles from published journals recorded in JSTOR, Pro Quest, Taylor & Francis Online, Elsevier, etc. The present study will analyze each article from the dimension of research content, classify them into different categories, and then make a quantitative analysis. The research results indicate that the international papers are mainly from the research field of philosophy studies, and can be classified into three categories as interpretation of Quine's thesis, comments on Quine's thesis, and evolvement of Quine's thesis; In the similar way, the articles from domestic journals are mainly contributed by authors from the research field of foreign language teaching and research, concentrating on four topics such as the introduction of Quine's thesis, comments on Quine's thesis, Quine's thesis and translation criterion, Quine's thesis and the subjectivity of translators.Based on different researcher backgrounds and research contents between China and abroad, we can conclude that the research results in China and the west are different from each other. Considering the different research backgrounds of researchers both in China and abroad, it is suggested that the future research both in China and abroad should pay more attention to the interdisciplinary research on Quine's thesis of indeterminacy of translation, rather than limited to one subject area, such as the research field of linguistic studies in China or the research filed of philosophical studies abroad. As for research contents, apart from researches on the application of Quine's thesis of indeterminacy of translation in translation criteria and the subjectivity of translator, research in China should put more efforts into the interpretation of the thesis itself and try to further develop this thesis, in order to better guide the studies of translation practice in China. At the same time, in addition to its existing theoretical exploration of Quine's thesis, the research abroad should not neglect the application studies of the thesis.