Perhaps the most important problem concerns a distinction between meaning and interpretation . Another has to do with the more classical distinction between meaning and reference . One example must suffice to give a sense of the problem concerning meaning and reference. Information must be added which is not in the original to make the English sound natural. What remains invariant under translation is not the meaning, but the interpretation, that is, the response the text is intended to evoke in a reader.
Interpretation depends on context, in there lies the principal source of the difficulty.
The distinction between meaning and interpretation, to the extent that it was recognized at all, has generally been thought too subtle to be of practical interest. The belief has been that, in sufficiently restricted or sufficiently technical domains of discourse, it essentially disappears. The domain of the discourse is already restricted to an extreme degree and it is clear that nothing but an analysis of the context will decide the interpretation. Restriction to a technical domain can help, but it can also hinder. But boule and Kugel mean ball , not scoop .