W. V. Quine is famous for insisting that translation is indeterminate and Ludwig Wittgenstein widely believed, not least by Quine himself, to have been committed to the same view of translation. Taking Quine at his word, I explore why he would think those conversant with the later Wittgensteins remarks on meaning would take the argument about translation in Word and Object in stride. I argue that Quine and Wittgenstein are, for all their differences, reasonably regarded as battling a commonly held philosophical conception of the determinateness of translation. As I read Quine, he had it right when in later work he emphasized that he should be understood as mounting an argument against propositions, and he – and Wittgenstein – are on much firmer ground than usually supposed. Also in an Afterword I point out that Rudolf Carnap, arguably Wittgensteins most important successor and Quines most important predecessor, largely agreed with the argument I attribute to Quine and Wittgenstein in the body of the text, his reservations about many of their views notwithstanding.

Both Carnap and Quine see an element of practical choice in our scientific theorizing but that they diverge on its significance, particularly with regard to a theory of meaning. From Carnap’s standpoint, linguistic frameworks are practically adopted without any prior constraints and then provide for a theory of meaning. In contrast, Quine sees a theory of meaning presupposing a more general assumption that all meaningful elements stand in a systematic relation before translation begins. Without this assumption, there is no work for a theory of meaning to do. In this sense, the dogmas of empiricism can only do explanatory work if the meaningful elements are already systematically linked in a way that translation might recapture.

The arguments for the indeterminacy of Translation in Quine’s Word and Object (1960) form a turning point in his thinking. Quine may have started out as a disciple of Carnap’s, but in the 1940s and 1950s the most salient feature of Quine’s work is a deep asymmetry. Such extensional notions as reference and ontology are central and fully intelligible. Intensional notions such as analyticity and synonymy are not intelligible, and epistemic concerns are, in his published writing, not central. The arguments for the indeterminacy of translation undermine the asymmetry and initiate changes to the role of ontology and reference, to the status of simplicity, to Quine’s understanding of analyticity and synonymy, and to the character and centrality of his epistemology, ultimately including even a return to a two-tier epistemology. The changes do not amount to a wholesale rejection of earlier views, but exist uneasily alongside those previous views. In the aggregate, however, the changes were significant and brought Quine’s position back much closer to Carnap’s.