THIS study began by trying to show

THIS study began by trying to show that translation proper, the interpretation of verbal signs in one language by means of verbal signs in another, is a special, heightened case of the process of communication and reception in any act of human speech. The fundamental epistemological a nd linguistic problems implicit in interlingual translation are fundamental just because they are already implicit in all intralingual discourse. What Jakobson calls ‘rewording’—an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs in the same language—in fact raises issues of the same o rder as translation proper. This book has argued, therefore, that a ‘theory of translation’ (in the ‘ inexact,’ non-formalized sense in which I have sought to define this concept) is necessarily a the ory or, rather, a historical-psychological model, part deductive, part intuitive, of the operations o f language itself. An ‘understanding of understanding,’ a hermeneutic, will include both. It is, co nsequently, no accident that the methodical investigation of the nature of semantic processes b egins with Kant’s call for a rational hermeneutic and with Schleiermacher’s study of the linguisti c structures and translatability of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek scriptures. To study the statu s of meaning is to study the substance and limits of translation.