ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses criticisms of the concept of untranslatability which Donald Davidson and Putnam have raised against the incommensurability thesis. Such incoherence applies only to the possibility of translating the untranslatable, and entails nothing about the possible instantiation of the relation of untranslatability by actual languages. Of course, the reason Davidson and Putnam employ the incoherence objection in the first place is that they assume incommensurability falls within the ambit of the argument. In sum, the direct incoherence argument does not apply to the incommensurability thesis. Putnam may assume that interpretation of a speaker who shares one's own language constitutes homophonic translation from the speaker's idiolect into one's own idiolect. The assumption that translation is necessary for understanding another language is implausible for a number of reasons. The central argument of his is directed against "the dualism of conceptual scheme and empirical content" which underlies the conception of language as independent of translation.
