所谓意义的“不确定性”（皮尔士的用语是“indeterminism”）是“确定性”的相对概念，也就是说二者是意义特征的相辅相成的两个方面。皮尔士和奎因都是“不确定性”和“确定性”辩证统一观的先驱和倡导者。从翻译学来看，意义的确定性是可译的依据，“不确定性”来自于意义的模糊，则是可译性的限度。

皮尔士提出指号意义的不确定性年代相当早，大约在十九世纪九十年代初，他在指号意义问题上是相对主义思想。当然，作为符号逻辑学家，皮尔士是将“确定性”和“不确定性”看作两个相辅相成的“逻辑公理”(logical axioms)来阐发的：前者受“因果律”(the law of causality)支配,后者受“偶然律”(the law of accidental cause)支配。这就不同于弗雷格和罗素等人只承认确定性的观点。

奎因是当代倡导意义的不确定性的重要哲学家。他认为，意义的不确定性无处不在。这是由于不同语言对“刺激”的反应在意义和指称上不可能相同，所以才产生了翻译的不确定性。奎因举了一个后来被广为引用的例子：不懂土著语的人听见土著人看见rabbit 叫一声“gavagai”，就认定后者的“音”就是前者的“意”（所指）。后来他用这个“音”去测定土著人指的是不是rabbit，土著人听了茫然不知所指。奎因是这样写的：

The utterances first and most surely translated in such a case are ones keyed to present events that are conspicuous to the linguist and his informant. A rabbit scurries by, the native says "Gavagai," and the linguist notes down the sentence "Rabbit" (or "Lo, a rabbit") as tentative translation, subject to testing in further cases. The linguist will at first refrain from putting words into his informant's mouth, if only for lack of words to put. When he can, though, the linguist has to supply native sentences for his informant's approval, despite the risk of slanting the data by suggestion. Otherwise he can do little with native terms that have references in common. For, suppose the native language includes sentences S1, S2, and S3, really translatable respectively as "Animal,”"White,” and “Rabbit” .

从这一点出发奎因分析说：

Stimulus situation always differ, whether relevantly or not; and, just because volunteered responses come singly, the classes of situations under which the native happens to have volunteered S1, S2, and Ss, are of course mutually exclusive, despite the hidden actual meanings of the words. How then is the linguist to perceive that the native would have been willing to assent to S1 in all the situations where he happened to yolunteer Ss, and in some but perhaps not all of the situations where he happened to volunteer s2? Only by taking the initiative and querying combinations of native sentences and stimulus situations so as to narrow down his guesses to his eventual satisfaction.

奎因的结论是：指称的客观性在完全不同的语言中，应该客观地进行比较，以便在不确定中加以确定：

The principle of indeterminacy of translation requires notice just because translation proceeds little by little and sentences are thought of as conveying meanings severally. That it requires notice is plainly illustrated by the almost universal belief that the objective references of terms in radically different languages can be objectively compared.

奎因认为，不确定性原则在翻译中不能掉以轻心，正是由于翻译是将语言拆开来进行的；翻译者习以为常地认为每个句子表示各不相联的意义。这时（尤其是在迥然不同的语言之间）将不确定性加以确定就尤其重要了。

责任编辑：admin