The republic of uzbekistan

Problem 2. Knowledge and underdetermination
Conventionality is the underlying matrix of all language in use. But it leads to an even more difficult problem which is underdetermination. Different languages leave different things unexpressed and assume you can figure it out from context. Others require that the speaker always be explicit about that same thing.For example, languages such as English, German or Spanish have definite articles which specify whether we are talking about something specific or general. But most other languages don’t. There’s a big difference between ‘a horse walked into the barn’ and ‘the horse walked into the barn’. Languages without a definite article can express this difference when it really matters but often leave it implicit. But English always has to express it even when it does not matter in a particular context. Which means a language like Czech or Russian is underdetermined when it comes to definiteness.So the speakers (and translators) have to rely on knowledge of context, culture or some other area of expertise to make sense of what goes on. And as we saw with the ‘pig’ example, metaphors are underdetermined by their very nature.
When we call somebody a ‘pig’ we are not saying they have a little curly tail. We are picking some other similarity. So as a speaker of the language, I have to know not just what a pig looks and behaves like but also the convention of the culture about what aspect of pigness we compare humans to .But I also have to know enough about the person being called a pig to understand what is meant. So a man could be called a pig because they are annoying (often with sexual undertones) or because he is very fat. Sometimes a bit of both. The expression is underdetermined as to the exact meaning. When I try to translate that expression, I may not have a similar expression that covers both eventualities. In Czech, calling a man ‘a pig’ without any specification would specify some of the annoyingness but is also underdetermined when it comes to messiness. However, it does not imply fatness.
So, if I wanted to specify fatness, I’d have to use a simile ‘he’s fat like a pig’ which overdetermines the original expression. Meaning, I have to pick from multiple underdetermined meanings in the original and pick one. This requires quite rich knowledge, but it can never be done perfectly. Asking the original speaker what they meant often does not help. Because their language is underdetermined, they may not have wanted to commit to one meaning or another. They may not even have been aware that such a commitment was possible. Their language did not require them to make a choice, so they didn’t make one. That’s why translation can sometimes reveal faulty reasoning and can sometimes go terribly wrong. And that’s why translators so often face over how much of themselves to insert into the translation. Sometimes they have to say more than the author intended and sometimes they do.