What is translatable?

Translatable is mostly understood as the capacity for some kind of meaning to be transferred from one language to another without undergoing radical change. The concept of translatable may operate in three approaches:

- for the rationalist, meanings are universal and are thus generally translatable into their various language-specific representations. The relation between thinking and speaking is thus held to be loose.

- For the relativist, thinking and speaking are more tightly bound together. Wilhelm von Humboldt saw each language as embodying a way of thinking.

- A third approach is to acknowledge that although all languages have a claim to individuality, text should still be translatable out of them. This approach is clearly pertinent for the translatability of religious, philosophical and literary texts.