ROBERT KIRK ON THREE ALLEGED RIVALS TO HOMOPHONIC TRANSLATION (Received 1 November, 1979) Homophonic translation is translation or interpretation by means of the iden- tity function: translation of each sentence or other expression by itself. Gerald Massey has constructed what he calls a "full-blown rival to the homo- phonic manual for a rather rich language", one which "supports not only the indeterminacy of translation but the added weight of the inscrutability of reference as well". 1 Since hitherto no arguments either for or against Quine's doctrine of the indeterminacy of translation have seemed more than plausible, the actual production of a pair of rival manuals of translation - manuals which are empirically adequate yet mutually incompatible - would be an exciting event. Massey adds to the interest of his production by bringing on stage two further non-homophonic manuals. However, I do not think his show lives up to its billing. I shall argue that his three manuals are not, as he claims, empirically adequate rivals to the homophonic one. Massey's non-homophonic translation manual d exploits the logical principle of duality. It applies to L, a first-order language with identity and modality but without singular terms, d is a general recursive function from expressions of L to expressions of L, defmed as follows. For every general term r d(r is the complement term of r Thus while the homophonic L -L manual h (which is simply the identity function) has it that 'dog', say, is true of all and only dogs, d has it that 'dog' is true of all and only non-dogs; and so on. Thus the d reference of a general term is the complement of its h reference. Connectives and operators are translated by their respective duals: negation by negation, disjunction by conjunction, conjunction by disjunction, the Philosophical Studies 42 (1982) 409-418. 0031-8116/82/0423-0409501.00 Copyright 9 1982 by D. Reidel Publishing Co., Dordrecht, Holland, and Boston, U.S.A.