George W. Grace - The Problem of Translation

The Problem of Translation

The postulate that it is possible to translate anything (no matter what) into any language (no matter which), he distinguished two idealized interpretations of the postulate. These were called the locutionary and perlocutionary interpretations. In the locutionary interpretation the claim is that, given any linguistic expression in any language, it is possible to find in any other language a linguistic expression with the same content. In the perlocutionary interpretation the claim is that anything (i.e., anything sayable) can be made understandable to anyone by means of that person's own language.

In the locutionary interpretation, then, what we might regard as "the translation" takes the form of a linguistic expression. Note that in this interpretation no claim is made about the understandability of the translation—i.e., about who might be expected to be able to understand it. In the perlocutionary interpretation, on the other hand, "the translation" should probably be thought of, not as a linguistic expression, but rather as the act of explaining—that is, as a performance, mainly verbal, by the translator. Although the performance of the translator (or better, "explainer"?) would involve the uttering of linguistic expressions, and although these linguistic expressions could be recorded, they are likely to lack cohesion. They are likely to include questions, answers to questions, trials and errors, false starts and restatements, etc., and they might have been accompanied by extensive non-verbal clues. It would hardly seem appropriate to think of such recorded explanations as themselves constituting the translation.