1. For us, both as linguists and as ordinary word-users, the mean­ing of any linguistic sign is its translation into some further, alter­native sign, especially a sign "in which it is more fully developed." The term "bachelor" may be converted into a more explicit designation, "unmarried man," whenever higher explicitness is re­quired. [Jakobson, 1992: 145]

2. We distinguish three ways of interpreting a verbal sign: it may be translated into other signs of the same language, into an­other language, or into another, nonverbal system of symbols. These three kinds of translation are to be differently labeled:

1.      Intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of other signs of the same language.

2.      Interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpre­tation of verbal signs by means of some other language.

3.       Intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. [Jakobson, 1992: 145]

3. Equivalence in difference is the cardinal problem of language and the pivotal concern of linguistics. Like any receiver of verbal messages, the linguist acts as their interpreter. No linguistic specimen may be interpreted by the science of language without a translation of its signs into other signs of the same system or into signs of another system. Any comparison of two languages implies an   examination of their mutual translatability. [Jakobson, 1992: 146]

4. Both the practice and the theory of translation abound with intricacies, and from time to time attempts are made to sever the Gordian knot by proclaiming the dogma of untranslatability. "Mr. Everyman, the natural logician," vividly imagined by B. L. Whorf, is supposed to have arrived at the following bit of reasoning: "Facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them."

[Jakobson, 1992: 146]

5. A faculty of speaking a given language implies a faculty of talking about this language. Such a "metalinguistic" operation permits revision and redefinition of the vocabulary used. [Jakobson, 1992: 147]

6. All cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. Whenever there is deficiency, terminology may be qualified and amplified by loanwords or loan-translations, neologisms or semantic shifts, and finally, by circumlocutions. Thus in the newborn literary language of the Northeast Siberian Chukchees, "screw" is rendered as "rotating nail," "steel" as "hard iron," "tin" as "thin iron," "chalk" as "writing soap," "watch" as "hammering heart." Even seemingly contradictory circumlocu­tions, like "electrical horsecar" (Электрическая конка), the first Russian name of the horseless street car, or "flying steamship" (jena paragot), the Koryak term for the airplane, simply designate the electrical analogue of the horse-car and the flying analogue of the steamer and do not impede communication, just as there is no se­mantic "noise" and disturbance in the double oxymoron—"cold beef-and-pork hot dog." [Jakobson, 1992: 147]

7. No lack of grammatical device in the language translated into makes impossible a literal translation of the entire conceptual in­formation contained in the original. [Jakobson, 1992: 149]

8. Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey. Each verb of a given language imperatively raises a set of specific yes-or-no questions, as for instance: is the narrated event conceived with or without reference to its completion? Is the narrated event presented as prior to the speech event or not? Naturally the attention of native speakers and listeners will be constantly focused on such items as are compulsory in their ver­bal code. [Jakobson, 1992: 149]