Radical translation is a thought experiment in ''
Word and Object
''Word and Object'' is a 1960 work by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, in which the author expands upon the line of thought of his earlier writings in ''From a Logical Point of View'' (1953), and reformulates some of his earlier arguments ...
'', a major philosophical work from American philosopher
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century ...
. It is used as an introduction to his theory of the
indeterminacy of translation The indeterminacy of translation is a thesis propounded by 20th-century American analytic philosophy, analytic philosopher W. V. Quine. The classic statement of this thesis can be found in his 1960 book ''Word and Object'', which gathered together a ...
, and specifically to prove the point of
inscrutability of reference
The inscrutability or indeterminacy of reference (also referential inscrutability) is a thesis by 20th century analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine in his book '' Word and Object''. The main claim of this theory is that any given sentence ...
. Using this concept of radical translation, Quine paints a setting where a linguist discovers a native linguistic community whose linguistic system is completely unrelated to any language familiar to the linguist. Quine then describes the steps taken by the linguist while attempting to fully translate this unfamiliar language based on the only data available: the events happening around the linguist combined with the verbal and non-verbal behaviour of natives.
Direct translation
As a first step, the linguist will use direct translation on occasion sentences. Hearing a lot of utterances of the one-word-sentence 'Gavagai' whenever the linguist sees rabbits, he suspects the one-word-sentence 'Rabbit' to be the correct translation and starts a process of questioning and pointing until he is reasonably certain that the native has the verbal disposition to assent to 'Gavagai' if seeing the stimulus, a rabbit. This stimulus is the affirmative stimulus meaning of 'Gavagai', and the linguist can conclude this is a correct translation.
Collateral information
The translation of occasion sentences may be complicated through collateral information. A native, with full expertise of the local surroundings, may already assent to 'Gavagai' when not even seeing a rabbit, but is sufficiently satisfied to assent when spotting a specific rabbit-fly that only flies around rabbits. The linguist on the other hand has no such expertise, and will wonder why the hypothesis seems off.
Collateral information can also create a difference of stimulus meaning between members of the same language community. To solve this issue, the linguist will determine intrasubjective stimulus synonymy, enabling the pairing of non-observation