文本的语义隐含性不同于期待性：语义隐含与意指、指称关涉；期待性与意向、意指关涉。具有语义隐含性的文本，其语言文字成了一道视觉屏障，使读者产生了“个中另有文章”之感。翻译学的文本解读研究应该帮助读者揭开文本的视觉屏障，揭示“个中文章”。
语义隐含性常常表现为有意的言不及义(“deliberate digression，”Lacan：1966）。“言不及义”、“不知所云”等等也有人称为“语义的迷雾” (“ semantic fog,”Richard Falk：1989)及“作者的他人化”(“the otherness of a writer,”George Orwell：1949）。
很显然，译者如果不透过迷雾、把握这个“他人化”，而仅仅抓住“作者”（拉康称之为“ego”〔自我外象]，即文章表面)，则翻译肯定“译犹不译”。
文本语义隐含的主要手段是种种象征手法(symbolic devices），即用象征来“免除”(absolve)作者的存在，而代之以“the other”（“另有所指”、“另有所云”，或者叫做“他在”）。下面是经常被引证的一段拉康的论述，它之所以被誉为是“精妙之言”，是因为其中表述了拉康心日中的“象征”的功能：
Symbols in fact envelop the life of man in a network so total that they join together, before he comes into the world, those who are going to engender him "by flesh and blood;" so total that they bring to his birth, along with the gifts of the stars, if not with the gifts of the fairies, the shape of his destiny; so total that they give the words that will make him faithful or renegade, the law of the acts that will follow him right to the very place where he is not yet and even beyond his death; and so total that through them his end finds its meaning in the last judgement, where the Word absolves his being or condemns it—unless he attain the subjective bringing to realization of being-for-death.
拉康认为象征具有的是一种无所不包、无所不能、尤远弗届、无处不在地“免除”主体的功效。从而使主体虽死犹生、虽静犹动、虽是犹非，简直可以说具有无边法力。下面我们以美国诗人Robert Frost(1874-1963）的一首短诗为例：
The Secret Sits
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and know.
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