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CLAIM-220: For a named population of receivers and a stated family of tasks, what survives a translation, retelling or rendering is the set of task-relevant communicative distinctions those receivers can still recover from it, and measured preservation of the pragmatic observables predicts that recovery better than preservation of the wording or of the proposition, with or without its force

4 min read

Properties18
StatusProposed
Version2
Rolethesis
Warrantinterpretive
Tagsphilosophy-of-language, translation, psychometrics
Linepragmatic-transport
Workswhat-survives-translation
AnswersQUESTION-002 — What survives when an utterance is translated, retold or rendered in another medium?
Bears onQUESTION-021 — Is there a frame-independent communicative act that translations approximate, or is the act's identity constituted by a family of frame-relative realizations?
Rests onCLAIM-061 — Renderings that keep the proposition can perform a different communicative act, so preserving the proposition is not sufficient for preserving the communicative event, CLAIM-050 — For report fidelity, fidelity is relative to the communicative decisions receivers make, and Blackwell's order on rendering procedures, over a designed distribution of situations, makes precise the ceiling a rendering sets on those decisions
SupersedesCLAIM-115 — What survives translation is the set of communicative distinctions and relations a receiving system can still reconstruct and act upon, not the wording or the proposition
ComplementsCLAIM-202 — What the line adds to functional and relevance-theoretic accounts of translation is measured structure beyond a static pragmatic profile: the context-indexed profile, its response to later framings and its decision relevance predict receivers' recovery beyond the similarity of static stance and footing ratings, CLAIM-252 — The account does not say which distinctions a translation ought to keep: it says how to tell which ones a rendering kept for stated tasks and receivers, and what ought to be kept is set by the purpose the translation serves
UsesTERM-034 — fidelity, as selective preservation of decision-relevant observational information under a communication constraint, relative to an interpreter
Illustrated byCASE-055 — The discriminating fidelity study: renderings built to dissociate wording, proposition, static stance and transport structure, judged by named populations in two languages on stated tasks
Cited as “complements” byCLAIM-129 — A factorization recovers only the structure visible in the relations it is fitted to, so a topic can survive a transformation that changes the communicative act, and a kind must be tested against probe families chosen for their bearing on the act
Cited as “concludes” byARG-019 — Blackwell's order on rendering procedures grounds the thesis that what survives translation is what a receiver can reconstruct, ARG-040 — In use, an utterance is interpreted by its contrast with the alternatives its speaker could have used, so what a translation must let a receiver reconstruct is those contrasts, not the wording or the proposition
Cited as “rests on” byCLAIM-078 — The theory succeeds if its observational and decision measures predict changes of communicative identity that text similarity misses and follow its compositional predictions across reconstructions; it needs neither quantum contextuality nor exact Noether laws
Rendered intodocs/arguments-by-conclusion.md

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The claim

This is the record’s reply of 2026-10-10 to six objections to the tests of the manuscript’s thesis. It is a proposal: a restatement of CLAIM-115 that the record would put forward in its place, Proposed until the study it names is run. It was adopted in CLAIM-115’s place on 2026-10-29.

CLAIM-115 says what survives is “the set of communicative distinctions and relations a receiving system can still reconstruct and act upon, not the wording or the proposition”. This entry keeps that answer and changes five things, each because an objection showed the original could not be tested as written.

  • The receivers are named. “A receiving system” becomes a named population with a stated sampling frame (CLAIM-243, CLAIM-226). Fidelity is relative to an interpreter (TERM-034; CLAIM-074), so the thesis says which interpreters.
  • The tasks are stated, and the criterion is behaviour. What the receivers recover is measured by what they do on stated tasks: which act they take the rendering to perform, and which continuation they choose among offered ones (CLAIM-232, CLAIM-244). A holistic rating of “fidelity” is no longer the criterion. This is CLAIM-050’s family Q of tasks, fixed for the study.
  • The rival is the one CLAIM-115 names. CLAIM-115’s foil is the global semantic object: the manuscript sets its account against “a privileged global semantic object” (Abstract, as QUESTION-021 quotes it). Embedding similarity is not that object. A proposition, and a proposition together with its illocutionary type, are. So the condition pits the pragmatic observables against human-rated propositional sameness and against sameness of proposition and force (CLAIM-233).
  • “As well as” has a margin. The condition is an equivalence test, with a margin and a power fixed in advance in the study’s preregistration (CLAIM-238). The values are the owner’s to fix; the thesis is bound to whatever the preregistration fixes, so it cannot re-choose its observables or weights after the data.
  • The interlingual arm decides. A failure in the arm where footing is grammatically marked on one side only defeats the thesis, whatever English paraphrase shows (CLAIM-222).

The positive clause is no longer close to true by definition (CLAIM-243). It identifies a receiver’s recovery with measured task performance, and predicts that performance from observables rated independently, by other raters, on the rendering. That can be false: the observables might predict recovery no better than the proposition does.

Every predictor in the comparison is rated by humans, and none by the people who supply the criterion (CLAIM-232). Method variance is then matched between the theory’s predictor and its rivals, and the criterion is measured by a different method (choices) from the predictors (ratings).

It drops CLAIM-115’s rest on CLAIM-082. The structuralist premise motivates the thesis and does not carry it. CLAIM-242 states the premise’s use-level form, if the owner wants a premise there.

What it answers

CLAIM-233 (the rival), CLAIM-232 (method variance), CLAIM-243 (the descriptive reading made empirical; the normative reading is CLAIM-252’s), CLAIM-244 (task and receivers named, weights fixed before the test), CLAIM-226 (named populations), CLAIM-222 (the interlingual arm). It meets them as the restatement that superseded CLAIM-115 on 2026-10-29.

What it does not say

  • It does not say the line’s transport structure is needed. A pass is what functional-equivalence and relevance-theoretic accounts predict too (CLAIM-233, on the rivals CLAIM-023 names), so a pass would not tell the line from them. CLAIM-202 carries that claim, with its own test.
  • It does not say which distinctions a translation ought to keep (CLAIM-252).
  • It does not say the observables are fixed for every study. They are fixed for the study that tests the claim, and a new study fixes its own before its data.
  • It does not say the result for one population carries to another. That is CLAIM-074’s question, and QUESTION-075’s.

Note of 2026-10-29: what holds it back

The comparative clause is a prediction about CASE-055, a study designed and not run: no result in the record sets human-rated stance, footing, alignment and uptake against propositional sameness, or proposition with force, as predictors of named receivers’ choices of act and continuation. Its first clause, that survival is what the named receivers recover, is stated by CLAIM-223, and nothing waits on this entry for it.

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