On Quine's Theory of “Indeterminacy of Translation”

Abstract

In 1960 Quine put forward the famous proposition of “indeterminacy of translation” on the basis of naturalistic language concept, behaviorism theory of meaning and semantic holism. This proposition has had a broad and far-reaching influence in philosophical and translation studies, and has made vital contributions to the philosophical study of translation. However, there are many theoretical defects in the theory of naturalism, behaviorism, and semantic holism on which the proposition is based. In addition, the proposition itself has a lot of doubts, so the proposition is unreliable.