As for matters that remain hidden from view, a bare definition does not convey their very essence; it merely distinguishes them and provides a kind of analogical indication.
This becomes clear once we lay down a guiding principle. We say:
Sound inquiry into definition
When one seeks a definition, the answer to the question “What is it?” is in fact a reply to someone who asks, “What is such-and-such?”—as when one says, “What is wine?”, “What is a human being?”, or “What is snow?”
With respect to the term named in the question, the inquirer is either ignorant of the thing signified or already knows it.
- The inquirer who grasps the concept but is unaware of the word that conveys it
This is like a person who asks about a term in a language not his own, or about an unfamiliar word in his own language, or even about a familiar word but seeks to pinpoint its referent. An example is an Arab asking about the meanings of foreign names, a non-Arab asking about Arabic names, or anyone asking another about words that belong to the respondent’s language but not to that of the questioner. Such inquiry constitutes translation.
Rules governing translation
A translator must know both languages—the one he is translating from and the one he is translating into. Once he is certain that the meaning intended by a term in the source language is identical to the meaning intended by a corresponding term in the target language, he renders it accordingly, just as one would translate “bread,” “water,” “eating,” “drinking,” “sky,” “earth,” “night,” “day,” “sun,” “moon,” and similar names of concrete objects and genera together with their particular instances, whether those instances are physical things or abstract notions. Translation may deal with individual words or with fully composed discourse.