[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Topher

Nope, I have no such philosophical opposition. It would, certainly have made my life irritating, though, at the various times in my life that I made my living developing computer language processing systems such as interpreters if I had. I do, however, have a philosophical opposition to someone thinking that the term is meant literally rather than metaphorically -- that the interpreters do in any real way "understand" the code that they process or associate real "meaning" with it. They just react mechanically to their inputs and respond in a way that hopefully we, their users, understand and find meaningful.

This just comes down to whether we include in the definition of interpret that it has to involve understanding. I don't see why we should, but if you insist, then I agree we're talking about metaphorical interpretation. On the other hand, I've written many interpreters myself, and I never thought of them as metaphorical. They are interpreting a code and performing actions based on that code. Is there a nonmetaphorical term for that process?

And no, I do not assume you think that -- but it is what you were saying.

You said "The literal meaning of "interpret" is to understand or take meaning from a symbolic representation or to translate language." I was pointing out that a ribosome translates a language and so falls under your literal definition. Does translation also necessarily imply understanding?

~~ Paul